VocalCrypt: Novel Active Defense Against Deepfake Voice Based on Masking Effect

TL;DR

VocalCrypt introduces an active, imperceptible defense mechanism embedding pseudo-timbre into audio to prevent AI voice cloning, significantly improving robustness and speed over existing methods without degrading audio quality.

Contribution

This paper presents VocalCrypt, a novel preemptive defense technique embedding pseudo-timbre into audio, offering superior robustness and real-time performance against AI voice cloning.

Findings

Achieves 500% faster generation speed than existing methods

Maintains audio quality while effectively preventing voice cloning

Performs well in automatic speaker verification tests

Abstract

The rapid advancements in AI voice cloning, fueled by machine learning, have significantly impacted text-to-speech (TTS) and voice conversion (VC) fields. While these developments have led to notable progress, they have also raised concerns about the misuse of AI VC technology, causing economic losses and negative public perceptions. To address this challenge, this study focuses on creating active defense mechanisms against AI VC systems. We propose a novel active defense method, VocalCrypt, which embeds pseudo-timbre (jamming information) based on SFS into audio segments that are imperceptible to the human ear, thereby forming systematic fragments to prevent voice cloning. This approach protects the voice without compromising its quality. In comparison to existing methods, such as adversarial noise incorporation, VocalCrypt significantly enhances robustness and real-time performance, achieving a 500\% increase in generation speed while maintaining interference effectiveness. Unlike audio watermarking techniques, which focus on post-detection, our method offers preemptive defense, reducing implementation costs and enhancing feasibility. Extensive experiments using the Zhvoice and VCTK Corpus datasets show that our AI-cloned speech defense system performs excellently in automatic speaker verification (ASV) tests while preserving the integrity of the protected audio.