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RESEARCH PAPER / 2026-01-29

Unifying Speech Editing Detection and Content Localization via Prior-Enhanced Audio LLMs

Jun Xue, Yi Chai, Yanzhen Ren ...Full author list in the original paper.

Wuhan University +4 · arXiv

Affiliations: Wuhan University, Anhui University, Communication University of China, Beihang University, Independent Researcher

Abstract

Speech editing achieves semantic inversion by performing fine-grained segment-level manipulation on original utterances, while preserving global perceptual naturalness. Existing detection studies mainly focus on manually edited speech with explicit splicing artifacts, and therefore struggle to cope with emerging end-to-end neural speech editing techniques that generate seamless acoustic transitions. To address this challenge, we first construct a large-scale bilingual dataset, AiEdit, which leverages large language models to drive precise semantic tampering logic and employs multiple advanced neural speech editing methods for data synthesis, thereby filling the gap of high-quality speech editing datasets. Building upon this foundation, we propose PELM (Prior-Enhanced Audio Large Language Model), the first large-model framework that unifies speech editing detection and content localization by formulating them as an audio question answering task. To mitigate the inherent forgery bias and semantic-priority bias observed in existing audio large models, PELM incorporates word-level probability priors to provide explicit acoustic cues, and further designs a centroid-aggregation-based acoustic consistency perception loss to explicitly enforce the modeling of subtle local distribution anomalies. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that PELM significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods on both the HumanEdit and AiEdit datasets, achieving equal error rates (EER) of 0.57\% and 9.28\% (localization), respectively.

The following analysis is generated by AI and may contain errors. It is separate from the authors’ abstract and is not peer review.

Research summary

The paper presents a comprehensive approach to speech editing detection and content localization through the development of the PELM framework, significantly advancing the field of audio processing and detection. The innovative methodology, combined with robust experimental validation, positions this work as a valuable contribution to combating the challenges posed by advanced audio manipulation techniques.

Methodology

The paper introduces a novel framework, PELM, that combines speech editing detection and content localization by treating them as an audio question answering task. The incorporation of a word-level probabilistic prior and an acoustic consistency-aware loss is innovative, addressing biases in existing audio large language models. The methodology is well-structured, leveraging a large-scale bilingual dataset (AiEdit) that enhances the robustness of the model against advanced speech editing techniques.

Results & evaluation

The experiments are thorough, comparing PELM against several state-of-the-art methods on both the HumanEdit and AiEdit datasets. The results demonstrate significant improvements in detection and localization tasks, with detailed metrics such as Equal Error Rate (EER) showing PELM's superiority. The ablation studies provide insights into the contributions of each component of the framework, reinforcing the validity of the proposed methods.

Reproducibility

The paper provides sufficient implementation details, including model architectures, training configurations, and hyperparameters, which support reproducibility. The authors have also made the dataset publicly available, facilitating further research in this area.

Limitations

One limitation is the reliance on the quality of the underlying large language models, which may affect the performance of PELM. Additionally, while the dataset is extensive, it may not cover all possible speech editing scenarios, potentially limiting the generalizability of the findings.

Broader impact

The research addresses critical issues related to audio deepfakes and misinformation, making it highly relevant in today's digital landscape. The ability to detect and localize speech edits has significant implications for security, privacy, and the integrity of information dissemination. The paper presents a comprehensive approach to speech editing detection and content localization through the development of the PELM framework, significantly advancing the field of audio processing and detection. The innovative methodology, combined with robust experimental validation, positions this work as a valuable contribution to combating the challenges posed by advanced audio manipulation techniques.

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