ISCA Archive Interspeech 2022
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2022

A blueprint for using deepfakes in sociolinguistic matched-guise experiments

Nathan Joel Young, David Britain, Adrian Leemann

Matched-guise paradigms, which are used extensively in speaker and accent evaluation studies, have long been hampered by empirical holes. We offer a solution by incorporating deepfake technology, which greatly reduces the number of potential confounds. We constructed a sociophonetic experiment whereby high-rising terminal (a.k.a. "uptalk”) – and the lack thereof – was superimposed onto a deepfaked "beautiful” and "less beautiful” female guise. The resulting four guises were incorporated into a 2x2-factor between-subjects experiment tested on female evaluators. Each evaluator assessed their respective guise against a list of prescribed attributes and offered free-form comments. Results align with studies on high-rising terminal as well as intuitions concerning conventional beauty, which validates the technique and motivates its wider adoption.