Forensic Linguistics, Cybersecurity & Technology Research (FACTOR)

Description

FACTOR (Forensic linguistics, Cybersecurity and Technology Research) focuses on the ways that forensic linguistics and forensic speech science intersect with cybersecurity and technology. Our research includes linguistically-informed investigations, intelligence, and evidence; the challenges and opportunities afforded by technologies like generative artificial intelligence (GenAI); and how developments in these areas play out in (cyber)security and protection contexts.

FACTOR's activity extends into direct engagement with AI systems and methods, not only their societal implications. Its Bot or Not? project tests how well humans and AI itself can detect AI-generated content in music, speech and text, including interactive tasks in which participants judge whether a conversational partner is human or AI-generated. The group's annual summer school, themed on language, speech and AI, runs sessions on creating voices using text-to-speech and voice-conversion tools, on detecting deepfakes, and on privacy-enhancing technologies for protecting voices and words. A related outreach activity, Fort Vox, explores whether voice-biometric security systems remain robust against deepfakes and voice clones through a challenge in which visitors try to unlock a device by mimicking a target voice.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2013

Contact details

On the map

Go to larger version of this map

Categorisation

Type

Tags

University affiliation(s)

Lancaster University
Lancaster