Recording of tirade of abuse allegedly to 16yo intern 91% likely to be authentic and not AI, according to analysis – and audio expert considers it genuine. Listen to improved audio below
The Labour party has failed to deny the authenticity of an alleged recording of Keir Starmer in a foul-mouthed tirade against a hapless 16-year-old intern.
The recording, alleged to have been made at the party’s conference which is now taking place in Liverpool, appears to show Starmer repeatedly swearing at a ‘moron’ staffer or intern about a ‘f***ing tablet’, was posted to Twitter:
At the time of writing, almost three hours after the expiry of the press enquiry deadline, Labour has not denied the authenticity of the recording, even though during conference the party press office should be staffed full-time.
While Starmer’s supporters have, unsurprisingly, claimed that the recording is AI-generated, analysis on the ‘AI Voice Detector’ app suggests it is 91.44% likely to be a real human voice and not AI:
However, Smith said he had not had an opportunity to do as the voice-detector site recommends and denoise the audio using Adobe. Skwawkbox increased the audio volume, split it into four 6-second clips as requested by the site and ran the files through Adobe. The results clips came back as 89% to 97% verified as human and not AI:
A number of Twitter accounts jumped into threads discussing the audio recording, claiming to have analysed it and shown that it is fake. However, those accounts seen by Skwawkbox seem to have existed for several years yet be with few or zero followers.
However, audio expert Kal Ross, who has worked in sound for more than three decades and holds a degree in acoustics, also checked the audio on behalf of Skwawkbox and said that he believes the recording is authentic:
I think it’s real and I’m happy to be quoted.
In 2010, then-PM Gordon Brown was recorded describing a member of the public as a ‘bigoted woman’. The slip was widely credited with damaging Labour’s performance in that year’s general election. If this recording is shown to be real, it is far worse behaviour than Brown’s unguarded moment.
The first clip below is the clip without denoising, but stacked to increase the volume without distortion. The second has been denoised for assessment by the AI voice detector platform:
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