Hot Tip

How to be a Fake Girlfriend

Automatic voice changers are easy to come by on the Internet. Using them to pull off an elaborate, Manti Te'o-style hoax is another story, writes Michael Daly

Hey guys, you, too, can be a fake girlfriend!

Just download one of the many online voice changer programs and presto, even the most gravelly voiced male can sound like an alluring female.

All you need to do is route your normal voice through your computer and you’re on your way from being a Ronaiah Tuiasospo to becoming a cell-phone Lennay Lukua capable of winning over the Manti Te’o of your dreams.

One program, AV Diamond Voice Changer, offers a feature that provides a respirator sound, intended for those who want to sound like Darth Vader, but handy if you want to sound like you are comatose in the ICU after a car accident, as Te’o’s fake girlfriend supposedly was.

Last week, Tuiasospo’s lawyer suggested that his client drew upon his abilities as an actor to sound so convincingly like a woman on the phone with T’eo.

That may or may not be true.

What is clear is that you can achieve the same effect with a Google search for “voice changer and male to female.”

The better programs cost as much as $99 and are used in recording studios, but some are free.

Of course, it also helps if you are posing as a Polynesian woman with family ties to a famous Samoan football clan and your intended is a Samoan football star who plays with a team known not as the Fighting Samoans, but the Fighting Irish.

The program can only bend your voice and add a few sound effects. You have to provide the words and the story. No software alone can get you to where your love spends hours on the phone with you every night until you both drift off to sleep.

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Michael DalySpecial Correspondent

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