This start-up can identify you by your voice in a matter of seconds

“Your money or your life!” may not be the smartest thing for balaclava-clad bank robbers to say any more

A start-up in China has figured out how to identify the unique characteristics of each person’s voice and cross-match it with existing “voice databases” to identify someone purely by what they say. SpeakIn, based in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, is currently working with police departments on the mainland. Its database of “voices” comes from places including phone banking to IT help desk queries.

“A voiceprint is personal and is another example of biological ID,” Yi Pengyu, chief operating officer of SpeakIn, told the South China Morning Post. “The technology can be primarily applied to security systems as it can recognise and track criminals by seeking a match from a database of their voices. A bank robber can certainly hide his face by wearing balaclavas but he always has to speak when he asks for money.”

Voiceprint recognition is another area under the broad umbrella of advanced technology called artificial intelligence that China has pledged to build into a US$150 billion industry over the next few years. China and its tech giants like Tencent and Baidu have poured billions into research and development into technologies that can crunch numbers and find patterns in everyday behaviour of its 1.3 billion people, and apply them to situations from recommending a pair of shoes based on your gender, age and income demographic to identifying criminals almost instantaneously from CCTV surveillance footage.

“China has emerged as a major global contender in using AI to drive economic progress. The initial focus of the AI in China has been skewed toward computer vision and voice tech,” according to a report from Goldman Sachs.

Yi claims the technology developed by SpeakIn has a 98 per cent accuracy rate when identifying people by their voice.