OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of an 'impending, significant fraud crisis' as AI can now impersonate voices and videos, defeating voice authentication used by financial institutions, raising alarm about malicious AI development outpacing defenses.
SoundHound AI stock soars nearly 400% in late 2024 on voice AI hype and Amelia acquisition, but plunges 44% in 2025 as Nvidia exits and skeptics like Stone Fox Capital label it 'Strong Sell' citing inflated growth and valuation.
Hyper, an AI startup, secures $6.3 million in funding to automate non-emergency 911 calls through an AI voice system, aiming to reduce burden on call centers and prioritize emergencies.
Meta acquires PlayAI as voice AI ignites fierce competition, fueling a surge in investment with companies racing to secure conversational AI capabilities through acquisitions of startups like ElevenLabs, Cresta, and Cartesia amid rapid technological advancements enabling natural voice interaction.
Mistral unveils Voxtral, a groundbreaking open source AI audio model offering affordable speech transcription and understanding capabilities for businesses, available in two variants for production and local deployments.
Meta bolsters its AI capabilities by acquiring Play AI, a startup that generates human-sounding voices using AI, aligning with Meta's roadmap for AI characters, Meta AI, wearables, and audio content creation.
Meta acquires AI voice cloning startup PlayAI, adding its team to Meta's efforts in developing superhuman artificial intelligence and AI products like AI Characters and wearables under Johan Schalkwyk.
Anthropic's Veo 3 update introduces speech for video clips created from images, while Flow expands globally to over 140 countries, although its audio generation capabilities remain experimental with inconsistent quality.
The AI 'band' The Velvet Sundown, which went viral on Spotify in June, admits they are an 'artistic provocation' composed entirely with AI and guided by human creative direction.
An AI-generated 'band' called Velvet Sundown, which amassed over 500,000 monthly Spotify listeners, reveals itself as an artistic hoax using Suno's AI platform to generate songs and maintain a consistent singer's voice, exploring how 'fake' content can have significant impact in internet culture.