REGULATING SYNTHETIC VOICE IMPERSONATION IN COURTS: A COMPREHENSIVE RESEARCH PAPER WITH INDIAN LEGAL FRAMEWORK

Artificial Voice Impersonation is when systems or people are deceived into thinking that an artificially created voice — produced by AI and Deepfake technology — is a genuine individual's voice. In literature the fake voice creation process is called synthetic voice cloning or voice synthesis; AI algorithms are trained on a set of previously recorded voices to create vocalizations that mimic the tone of the training sample. The hyper-realism of these artificially created audio reproductions makes them nearly indistinguishable from actual human voices; thus, there are problems associated with deception and digital consent. There is documented evidence of the use of fabricated/impersonated synthetic voice in committing crimes and fabricating evidence. Thus, there is a very serious problem for Courts of Law — in which the presentation of fabricated audio recordings can be used as "evidence" to support claims of confessions from defendants or statements from witnesses or victims; therefore, the reliability of the trial being fair cannot be ensured and the integrity of the evidence has been questioned.