VocaLock: Watermark-Based Detection of Zero-Shot Voice Conversion Manipulation and Timbre Attribution

Zero-shot voice conversion (ZSVC, technology that can change a person's voice characteristics without training data) creates risks of audio forgery and copyright violations. Researchers propose VocaLock, a watermark-based detection system (invisible digital markers embedded in audio) that can both identify forged audio and identify whose voice was stolen when ZSVC is used maliciously. VocaLock embeds watermarks in the audio spectrum (frequency information) in a way that survives voice conversion attacks while maintaining audio quality.