ElevenLabs Block on Cloning Biden's Voice Easily Bypassed

· Mar 7, 2024 at 9:35 AM

Hyped AI startup ElevenLabs introduced a 'no-go voices' policy after its tools were used as part of a robocall impersonating Biden. But those protections are easily circumvented, 404 Media has found in its own tests.

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ElevenLabs, a “unicorn” startup valued at $1 billion that uses AI to clone voices, will generate a voice clone of President Joe Biden that users can make say anything, despite the company introducing a new policy that explicitly forbids cloning the voices of politicians running for office. In short, 404 Media discovered a bypass to ElevenLabs’ system that allows a user to generate cloned voices that under ElevenLabs’ own policy should be not possible. As well as Biden, this includes high profile celebrities such as Taylor Swift.

For the introductory price of $1 a month, anyone can sign up for an ElevenLabs account and take a minute or so of audio of anyone’s voice and upload it to ElevenLabs’ platform to instantly create a “cloned voice.” This cloned voice can then be made to say anything by typing a text prompt.