Speech anonymization has focused on the acoustic signal, leaving open how much speaker information the transcribed words themselves retain. In this work, we study pairwise speaker and demographic-attribute verification from transcribed speech. We introduce SPARC (Spoken Profile Authorship Recognition Corpus), a benchmark built from two podcast corpora comprising over 12,500 speakers, 1.5M quality-filtered utterances, and speaker-level inferred or source-provided labels for sex, age, and accent, and evaluate five attribution models and three LLMs on identity- and attribute-verification trials with episode- and metadata-based topic proxies. LLM adversaries distinguish same-speaker pairs from text alone. Attribute-label agreement is harder to verify, but LLMs perform sex- and accent-label verification above chance. Finally, releasing only short probe texts (50 words) degrades the strongest adversaries the most, offering a partial reduction in observed linkage.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: Overview of the SPARC construction pipeline. Eligible single-speaker speech from NaturalVoices and SPoRC is filtered for SNR and background music, retained when two ASR models agree by at least 90%, and annotated with age, sex, and accent labels from source metadata or model predictions.
NaturalVoices
SPoRC
Number of Speakers
2,344
10,165
Number of Episodes
3,500
15,555
Speaker–episode pairs
6,766
15,555
Number of Utterances
779,494
795,591
Avg. utt. / speaker
332.6
78.3
Avg. utt. / speaker–episode
115.2
51.2
Table 1: Corpus statistics after filtering and attribute inference. Sex and age are taken from dataset metadata for NaturalVoices and inferred via Vox-Profile for SPoRC subset. Accent is binarized into North American vs. Other due to the sparsity of remaining accent groups.
Figure 2: ROC curves for identity verification with 200-word probes and L=20 enrollment texts, for all eight models. NaturalVoices-C/S/D denote the combined, same-topic proxy (within-episode), and different-topic proxy (cross-episode) conditions and SPoRC-D is the different-topic condition of SPoRC.
Combined
Same Topic
Diff. Topic
Attribute
Model
EER ↓
AUC ↑
EER ↓
AUC ↑
EER ↓
AUC ↑
Biological Sex
SentenceBERT
0.468
0.543
0.508
0.490
0.484
0.515
GPT-5-mini
0.379
0.664
0.437
0.608
0.377
0.669
Llama-3.3-70B
0.403
0.632
0.422
0.611
0.420
0.612
Age Group
SentenceBERT
0.447
0.576
0.461
0.545
0.469
0.548
GPT-5-mini
0.442
0.572
0.496
0.510
0.459
0.557
Table 2: Attribute verification results on NaturalVoices with 200-word probes and L=20 enrollment texts. Same- and different-topic labels denote within- and cross-episode proxies, respectively. Best result per condition within each attribute in bold.
Main - 200w / L =20
Δ 200w / L =5
Δ 50w / L =20
Δ 50w / L =5
Model
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
SentenceBERT
0.351
0.708
+0.024
−0.025
+0.038
−0.047
+0.046
−0.059
GPT-5-mini
0.285
0.790
+0.041
−0.049
+0.065
−0.077
+0.076
−0.089
Llama-3.3-70B
0.281
0.789
+0.044
−0.045
+0.047
−0.053
+0.064
−0.075
Table 3: Identity verification ablations on NaturalVoices (different-topic). Main results use probe ≈ 200 words and L=20 ; Δ columns show the change when reducing probe length and/or enrollment size L . Best EER and AUC in the main setting in bold .
Table 4: Low-FPR identity verification on NaturalVoices (different-topic, 200-word probes, L=20 ). TPR at FPR =1% and 0.1% ; bootstrap 95% CIs are tight for TPR@1% (e.g. GPT-5-mini [0.265,0.293] ) and wider at 0.1% . Best per column in bold.
Appendix figures & tables12 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
Probe / enrollment
Task
EP
HP
EN
HN
Total
P=50,L=5
Speaker
3,748
3,046
4,015
2,789
13,598
Sex
1,748
1,965
2,050
1,041
6,804
Age
2,222
2,956
1,059
567
6,804
Accent
2,445
3,055
960
344
6,804
P=50,L=20
Speaker
3,748
3,046
4,015
2,789
13,598
Sex
1,748
1,965
2,050
1,041
6,804
Appendix
Table 5: NaturalVoices trial counts by task, input-length setting, and trial condition. Easy positives (EP) pair the same speaker or attribute within a podcast, whereas hard positives (HP) pair the same speaker or attribute across podcasts. Easy negatives (EN) pair different speakers or attributes across podcasts, whereas hard negatives (HN) pair them within a podcast. All demographic trials are cross-speaker. Here, P is the target probe length in words and L is the maximum number of enrollment utterances. The four reported settings contain 124,356 task-specific trials.
Probe / enrollment
Task
EP
HP
EN
HN
Total
P=50,L=5
Speaker
–
2,336
2,336
–
4,672
Sex
–
2,000
2,000
–
4,000
Age
–
2,000
2,000
–
4,000
Accent
–
2,000
2,000
–
4,000
P=50,L=20
Speaker
–
2,327
2,327
–
4,654
Sex
–
2,000
2,000
–
4,000
Appendix
Table 6: SPoRC trial counts by task, input-length setting, and trial condition. The metadata-filtered SPoRC protocol retains hard-positive (HP) and easy-negative (EN) trials. Easy-positive (EP) and hard-negative (HN) conditions were not constructed since the SPoRC podcast has only a single speaker and are marked with dashes. Positive and negative counts are balanced within every task and setting. Here, P is the target probe length in words and L is the maximum number of enrollment utterances. The protocol contains 65,174 task-specific trials.
Figure 3: ROC curves for speaker identity verification on SPoRC (different-topic condition) for all eight models, across the four probe-length ( P , in words) and enrollment-size ( L , in utterances) settings.
Figure 4: ROC curves for sex-label verification on SPoRC (different-topic condition) for all eight models, across the four probe-length ( P ) and enrollment-size ( L ) settings.
Figure 5: ROC curves for age-group verification on SPoRC (different-topic condition) for all eight models, across the four probe-length ( P ) and enrollment-size ( L ) settings.
Figure 6: ROC curves for accent verification on SPoRC (different-topic condition) for all eight models, across the four probe-length ( P ) and enrollment-size ( L ) settings.
Probe/enrollment
GPT-5-mini
Llama-3.3-70B
P=50,L=5
0.410
0.390
P=50,L=20
0.406
0.376
P=200,L=5
0.399
0.390
P=200,L=20
0.402
0.391
Appendix
Table 7: EER for SPoRC speaker verification when positive and negative pairs both cross podcast series (lower is better).
Metric
Age group
Sex
Accent
Human agr.
60–76%
94–98%
80–82%
Model–majority agr.
64%
98%
88%
Human κ
0.489
0.920
0.613
Model–majority κ
0.531
0.960
0.760
Appendix
Table 8: Perceptual audit of model-inferred attribute labels on 50 category-balanced recordings per attribute. Human agreement is shown as the reported range.
Main - 200w / L =20
Δ 200w / L =5
Δ 50w / L =20
Δ 50w / L =5
Model
Condition
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
SentenceBERT
Combined
0.350
0.683
+0.048
−0.049
+0.043
−0.046
+0.062
−0.062
Easy
0.168
0.913
+0.071
−0.072
+0.070
−0.071
+0.110
−0.118
Hard
0.618
0.334
−0.005
+0.017
−0.009
+0.020
−0.032
+0.050
Same Topic
0.460
0.567
+0.040
−0.064
+0.004
−0.025
+0.020
−0.034
Diff Topic
0.351
0.708
+0.024
−0.025
+0.038
−0.047
+0.046
−0.059
Appendix
Table 9: Identity verification results on NaturalVoices for all models across trial conditions and ablation settings. Main results use probe ≈ 200 words and L=20 ; Δ columns show the change from the main setting. Best EER and AUC per condition (main setting) in bold .
Main - 200w / L =20
Δ 200w / L =5
Δ 50w / L =20
Δ 50w / L =5
Model
Condition
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
SentenceBERT
Combined
0.468
0.543
−0.001
−0.001
+0.003
−0.006
−0.003
+0.007
Easy
0.222
0.855
+0.038
−0.033
+0.051
−0.059
+0.056
−0.066
Hard
0.776
0.146
−0.025
+0.025
−0.052
+0.043
−0.081
+0.089
Same Topic
0.508
0.490
−0.010
+0.010
−0.005
±0.000
−0.031
+0.041
Diff Topic
0.484
0.515
−0.001
−0.008
+0.018
−0.011
+0.015
−0.011
Appendix
Table 10: Biological sex verification results on NaturalVoices for all models across trial conditions and ablation settings. Main results use probe ≈ 200 words and L=20 ; Δ columns show the change from the main setting. Best EER and AUC per condition (main setting) in bold .
Main - 200w / L =20
Δ 200w / L =5
Δ 50w / L =20
Δ 50w / L =5
Model
Condition
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
SentenceBERT
Combined
0.447
0.576
+0.037
−0.052
+0.023
−0.039
+0.026
−0.043
Easy
0.198
0.873
+0.051
−0.045
+0.063
−0.060
+0.091
−0.092
Hard
0.746
0.173
+0.002
±0.000
−0.033
+0.037
−0.053
+0.065
Same Topic
0.461
0.545
+0.030
−0.049
+0.033
−0.038
+0.052
−0.051
Diff Topic
0.469
0.548
+0.018
−0.037
+0.022
−0.033
+0.014
−0.028
Appendix
Table 11: Age-group verification results on NaturalVoices for all models across trial conditions and ablation settings. Main results use probe ≈ 200 words and L=20 ; Δ columns show the change from the main setting. Best EER and AUC per condition (main setting) in bold .
Main - 200w / L =20
Δ 200w / L =5
Δ 50w / L =20
Δ 50w / L =5
Model
Condition
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
EER (↓)
AUC (↑)
SentenceBERT
Combined
0.441
0.578
−0.002
+0.010
+0.004
−0.001
+0.010
−0.014
Easy
0.212
0.869
+0.033
−0.027
+0.045
−0.053
+0.074
−0.086
Hard
0.752
0.171
−0.039
+0.045
−0.063
+0.060
−0.076
+0.083
Same Topic
0.483
0.534
−0.023
+0.018
−0.010
+0.003
−0.004
−0.012
Diff Topic
0.494
0.510
−0.021
+0.021
−0.009
+0.011
−0.005
+0.003
Appendix
Table 12: Accent verification results on NaturalVoices for all models across trial conditions and ablation settings. Main results use probe ≈ 200 words and L=20 ; Δ columns show the change from the main setting. Best EER and AUC per condition (main setting) in bold .
Speech anonymization is evaluated with automatic speaker verification attackers whose performance depends on the attribute distribution of both their training and evaluation data, which may bias privacy estimates for some speaker groups. To alleviate this issue, we introduce VoxAnon, a dataset built from VoxCeleb1 and 2 with training and evaluation splits balanced across gender, age, accent, and pitch. We extract and cross-check attributes using two complementary methods, balance trial lists per subgroup, and draw test/enrollment utterances from distinct video sources in order to limit linguistic and session bias. Comparing VoxAnon with unbalanced training and test data across four attackers and three anonymizers, we show that attribute imbalance changes which subgroups appear hardest to re-identify, in directions that depend on the attribute. In the balanced setting, residual disparities persist, mostly tied to accent and pitch, and depend on the anonymizer/attacker pair. Code and trial lists are publicly available.
Orane Dufour, Paul Magron, Mickael Rouvier
Université de Lorraine, CNRS Inria, LORIA, F-54000 Nancy, France · LIA, Avignon University F-84911 Avignon, France
As audio-first agents become increasingly common in physical AI, conversational robots, and screenless wearables, audio large language models (audio-LLMs) must integrate speaker-specific understanding to support user authorization, personalization, and context-aware interaction. This requires modeling who is speaking, how the voice sounds, and how recording conditions affect speaker cues. Conventional speaker verification systems provide strong scalar scores but little linguistic evidence, while current audio-LLMs and speaker-aware language models have limited ability to organize speaker information beyond binary labels or descriptive profiles. We present SpeakerLLM, a speaker-specialized audio-LLM framework that unifies single-utterance speaker profiling, recording-condition understanding, utterance-pair speaker comparison, and evidence-organized verification reasoning within a natural-language interface. We construct verification-reasoning targets and a decision-composition policy that separate profile-level evidence from the final same-or-different decision and organize recording condition, profile evidence, and the decision into a structured trace. At its core, SpeakerLLM uses a hierarchical speaker tokenizer designed to capture multiple granularities of speaker evidence. Utterance-level speaker embeddings summarize identity and profile-level cues, whereas frame-level speaker features preserve fine-grained acoustic descriptors. Experiments show that SpeakerLLM-Base improves speaker-profile and recording-condition understanding over general audio-LLMs, while SpeakerLLM-VR preserves strong generated-verdict accuracy and produces decision traces grounded in the supervised verification reasoning schema. We will release the metadata-enriched supervision dataset and target-construction code for reproducibility.
KiHyun Nam, Jungwoo Heo, Siu Bae +2
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) · University of Seoul
Speech-aware large language models (LLMs) can accept speech inputs, yet their training objectives largely emphasize linguistic content or specific fields such as emotions or the speaker's gender, leaving it unclear whether they encode speaker identity. First, we propose a model-agnostic scoring protocol that produces continuous verification scores for both API-only and open-weight models, using confidence scores or log-likelihood ratios from the Yes/No token probabilities. Using this protocol, we benchmark recent speech-aware LLMs and observe weak speaker discrimination (EERs above 20% on VoxCeleb1). Second, we introduce a lightweight augmentation that equips an LLM with ASV capability by injecting frozen ECAPA-TDNN speaker embeddings through a learned projection and training only LoRA adapters. On TinyLLaMA-1.1B, the resulting ECAPA-LLM achieves 1.03% EER on VoxCeleb1-E, approaching a dedicated speaker verification system while preserving a natural-language interface.
Thomas Thebaud, Yuzhe Wang, Laureano Moro-Velazquez +2
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA · Human Language Technology Center of Excellence, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA