On the invertibility of a voice privacy system using embedding alignement
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Abstract (arXiv)
This paper explores various attack scenarios on a voice anonymization system using embeddings alignment techniques. We use Wasserstein-Procrustes (an algorithm initially designed for unsupervised translation) or Procrustes analysis to match two sets of x-vectors, before and after voice anonymization, to mimic this transformation as a rotation function. We compute the optimal rotation and compare the results of this approximation to the official Voice Privacy Challenge results. We show that a complex system like the baseline of the Voice Privacy Challenge can be approximated by a rotation, estimated using a limited set of x-vectors. This paper studies the space of solutions for voice anonymization within the specific scope of rotations. Rotations being reversible, the proposed method can recover up to 62% of the speaker identities from anonymized embeddings.
Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 7 of its 19 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Oct 2021.
Builds on
7 of 19 references.
References · 7
- 2017Unsupervised Learning by Predicting Noisecited by 97
- 2018Unsupervised Alignment of Embeddings with Wasserstein Procrustescited by 96
- 2020Introducing the VoicePrivacy Initiativecited by 48
- 2019Speaker Anonymization Using X-vector and Neural Waveform Modelscited by 41
- 2019Evaluating Voice Conversion-based Privacy Protection against Informed Attackerscited by 30
- 2019The GDPR & Speech Data: Reflections of Legal and Technology Communities, First Steps towards a Common Understandingcited by 18
- 2020Is Aligning Embedding Spaces a Challenging Task? A Study on Heterogeneous Embedding Alignment Methodscited by 2
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 2; 2025: 2.
4 papers.
- 2025You Are What You Say: Exploiting Linguistic Content for VoicePrivacy Attacks11 Jun 2025
- 2025The First VoicePrivacy Attacker Challenge19 Apr 2025
- 2024The First VoicePrivacy Attacker Challenge Evaluation Plan9 Oct 2024
- 2024The Impact of Speech Anonymization on Pathology and Its Limits11 Apr 2024