Are the audiotapes periodically released by Osama bin Laden real or fake? Their poor audio quality and the increasing availability of reliable voice transformation technologies certainly means there is a chance they're fake, said an Oregon scientist.

"Many places in the world are developing technologies that can quickly and easily transform voices," said Jan van Santen, Ph.D., a mathematical psychologist at Oregon Health & Science University's OGI School of Science & Engineering, based in Hillsboro, Ore. "Because voice transformation technologies are increasingly available, it is becoming harder to detect whether a voice has been faked. The only way to decide whether a recording is authentic is by looking for special cues that are left behind, depending on which transformation method is used."

At the OGI School's Center for Spoken Language Understanding, a new method for voice transformation was developed by one of van Santen's researchers, Alexander Kain, Ph.D. The method mimics the fine acoustic detail that reflects the unique characteristics of an individual's oral cavity and vocal cords.

"The important point isn?t that we know how to do this, but that many scientists already have similar transformation methods and that these methods are simple to implement and readily available to anyone in the literature and on the Internet," noted van Santen.

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