Joe Biden Voice Clones Are Hilarious, Completely Unsettling

As any President should be, Joe Biden is a busy man these days.

A potential re-election campaign, economic turbulence, and an ongoing war in Ukraine are just some of the issues he is juggling right now.

It’s enough to cause some legitimate anxiety. Enough to make person need to unwind. Perhaps even enough to dabble in some low-grade weed?

Well, maybe not.

But if you live on social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok, you may have recently come across trending fake audio clips of Biden, including a popular one in which he riffs on his affinity for shitty pot.

See, I’m from Scranton, and what I’m smoking is dirt. Let’s get that straight, Jack. I’m smoking pure brick. Ass. Okay? Americans are wanting to smoke that dirt.

That’s not my President! Quite literally, in fact — and it has nothing to do with politics.

Biden didn’t say he smokes “pure brick” or “Americans are wanting to smoke that dirt,” but the voice clone AI tool Voice Lab from Eleven Labs will have those who use the tool thinking twice thanks to its astonishingly-detailed dialogue clones.

From celebrities, athletes and public officials to your own family and friends, this text-to-voice tool can pair any voice profile with provided scripts. All it needs is a clear audio sample or two to work. The more samples it has, the more precise it gets.

Note: We profiled Voice Lab in our Jan. 30 newsletter. Check it out here.

As are most recent developments within AI, this is both totally fascinating and completely unsettling.

The potential for some killer practical jokes, funny internet memes, and benefits to publishers aside, the negative ramifications of such technology aren’t hard to imagine.

In fact, such ramifications are already playing out.

Instances of high profile personalities spewing hate speech and other incendiary rants have already hit the internet, which should probably come as a surprise to nobody.

Exacerbating the issue is that more than enough people already can’t decipher real news from fake, the legitimacy of memes, or sarcasm from sincerity. Think about the absolute shitshow the internet is going to make of this.

Joe Biden talking about smoking brick? Hilarious and easily detectable for a person with a reasonable bullshit filter. But the content won’t always be so ridiculous. And therein lies the problem.

The audio strategies for those looking to enhance their storytelling, news reporting, and online publications are endless, but so are the possibilities looking to cause a crisis.

Have a vendetta against a co-worker? Want to make a co-worker or boss look bad? Grab a voice sample or two, plug in whatever horrific thing you want that person to say and watch chaos ensue.