This book is about recent research in the area of profiling humans from their voice, which seeks to deduce and describe the speaker's entire persona and their surroundings from voice alone. It covers several key aspects of this technology, describing how the human voice is unique in its ability to both capture and influence the human persona -- how, in some ways, voice is more potent and valuable then DNA and fingerprints as a metric, since it not only carries information about the speaker, but also about their current state and their surroundings at the time of speaking. It provides a comprehensive review of advances made in multiple scientific fields that now contribute to its foundations. It describes how artificial intelligence enables mechanisms of discovery that were not possible before in this context, driving the field forward in unprecedented ways. It also touches upon related and relevant challenges posed by voice disguise and other mechanisms of voice manipulation. The book acts as a good resource for academic researchers, and for professional agencies in many areas such as law enforcement, healthcare, social services, entertainment etc.
Rita Singh is an associate research professor at the School of computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, and is also affiliated to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute of Strategic Analysis at CMU. She has worked in the areas of speech and audio processing for more than two decades. Her research has been on the development of technology for the automated discovery, measurement and learning of the information encoded in voice signal for optimal voice intelligence. Currently, her research focus is on the science of profiling humans from their voice. For the past four years, her group at CMU has been working towards building AI-forensic technologies for the concurrent deduction of myriad human parameters from voice. Her research ranges from basic explorations into the human voice, its variability and iuniqueness, to developing mechanisms for the reconstruction of the entire human persona from voice. He research had led to the creation and demonstration of live systems for multi-perspective voice profiling and for the reconstruction of human faces at the World Economic Form and other public fora. The results of her work continue to aid crime investigations by federal and law enforcement agencies in USA, and find applications in security, healthcare and social settings.
