# Generation Provenance Before Behavior Attribution: Auditing Synthetic Speech Research Objects

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01378 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.01378/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 4 of its 7 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Datasheets for Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09010/) (2018)
- [Data Cards: Purposeful and Transparent Dataset Documentation for Responsible AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01075/) (2022)
- [The Price of Format: Diversity Collapse in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18949/) (2025)
- [Train a Unified Multimodal Data Quality Classifier with Synthetic Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15162/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Attributing model behavior to synthetic training data requires knowing what produced each training item before estimating what that item caused. A waveform-label pair does not preserve this knowledge. We propose a generation-provenance substrate in which a synthetic research object binds source specification, generated content, waveform, target, fact requirements, quality signals, review lineage, and immutable manifest identity. Producer and selection mechanism determine evidentiary meaning; storage location and variable name do not. We audit this substrate in a private Japanese care-handoff pipeline. A 113-asset review population contains 1.552 hours of synthetic speech across six scenario families; all items have linked audio, transcripts, candidate notes, and fact checklists, but human evidence is selective and source-specific. Two faithful-only manifests are scenario-seed-disjoint and immutably versioned, while exact upstream attribution remains blocked by floating generator aliases, missing per-clip TTS and code stamps, and an unversioned checking prompt. We argue that generation provenance is necessary but not sufficient for behavior attribution: it defines the candidate causal graph and audit units, whereas contributive attribution still requires frozen training runs and intervention or influence evidence. The paper contributes a compact provenance contract, an audit protocol, and a bounded case study for synthetic-data attribution; controlled research access may be offered, but we do not claim causal training-data attribution, clinical validity, or unrestricted public release.