Ethics Untangled
Ethics Untangled is a series of conversations about the ethical issues that affect all of us, with academics who have spent some time thinking about them.
Ethics Untangled is also the long-form online presence of IDEA, edited by Danielle Bromwich and Luke Brunning, where we make room for longer interviews, staff and student profiles, articles and other forms of content.
Both are brought to you by IDEA, the Ethics Centre, a specialist unit for teaching, research, training and consultancy in Applied Ethics at the University of Leeds. IDEA offers Masters programmes in Healthcare Ethics and Applied and Professional Ethics, research degrees and consultancy services.
The Ethics Untangled podcast is edited by Mark Smith at Leeds Media Services.
Music is by Kate Wood.
Ethics Untangled
66. Should we be worried about voice synthesis? With Matilde Nanni
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One of the many technological advances that have been made in recent years is the ability of computers to synthesise people's voices to a very high standard. Voice synthesis can produce new, entirely synthetic voices, but it can also reproduce the voices of real people, to the point where it's difficult if not impossible to tell the synthetic voice apart from the real one. Matilde Nanni, who is based at the University of Inland Norway in Lillehammer, thinks voice donors, i.e. people whose voices are used to train voice synthesis software, can sometimes be harmed through this process in ways we should be concerned about.
Here are a few links to recent papers on the topic recommended by Matilde:
- Berkowitz, A. E., & Sweeney, M. E. (2025). Look Who’s Talking: Voice cloning as tension point between identity and data. Philosophy & Technology, 38(4), 131. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-025-00965-7
- Berkowitz, A. E., & Sweeney, M. E. (2026). Simulating Voice and the Simulacra of Voice Clones. Philosophy & Technology, 39(1), 4. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-025-01027-8
- Leuenberger, M. (2025). The role of the voice for identity and implications for voice cloning technology. Philosophy & Technology, 38(4), 175. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13347-025-00969-3
Ethics Untangled is produced by IDEA, The Ethics Centre at the University of Leeds.
As well as the podcast, Ethics Untangled is also the name for the long-form online presence of IDEA.
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