Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

google.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 338 posts

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#211

Post by ehsankia »

AbbasHaiderAli wrote: post #39

Wow, impressive results! Already a few examples in the comments of what bad actors could do this tech. I wanted to share an example of something good. I lost my dad about 6 years ago after a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis and a 3 month rapid diagnosis. I have some, but not a lot of video content of him from over the years. My mom still misses him terribly so for her 60th birthday I tried to splice together an audio message…

This podcast explores how similar tech is used to give voice back to people who have lost it due to voice impairment. Basically allowing all the people using machines that sound like the classic Hawking computer voice to have their own voice instead.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/15/741827437/finding-your-voice-...

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#212

Post by jimmydorry »

jfengel wrote: post #187
thomascgalvin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I legitimately think this could be huge for self-published authors. It takes a skilled professional about forty hours of work to produce an audiobook from a novel-length manuscript. Tacotron could do it in minutes.

I don't see that coming soon. The voice is one thing, but the performance goes far, far beyond that. Without understanding the text, you can't get good prosody out of a single sentence, much less developing a character for a whole performance. You'd have to "direct" this on a word-by-word basis: "Put the emphasis here. Speed up 10% here. Decrease vocal intensity 25%". You'd end up producing a whole "score", and it wo…

Feed in enough "good" audio books, and you would probably get something passable for smaller titles.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#213

Post by headcanon »

arkades wrote: post #159

I once got a call while I was lecturing some students. It was repeated three times in three minutes - I assumed it was an emergency and stepped out. I was greeted by someone explaining that my father had caused a car accident, and they were calling on his behalf. That someone would need to send over some money for repairs or they’d call the police. Sure. They added that their cousin, the driver, is a parolee now hold…

First off, Awesome story.

I have a friend who had something similar happen, he got a frantic call from his grandmother who learned via a scam call that he was in jail across the country and needed bail money. This was a few years ago, so they couldn't have used a duplicate of his voice, but possible they were relying on imperfect memory.

Sweeping generalization, but elderly are and would likely prime targets of this kind of scam in the future since they likely have funds and are less likely to be educated in the state of the art for this kind of tech, not to mention a protective instinct.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#214

Post by inetknght »

arkades wrote: post #159

I once got a call while I was lecturing some students. It was repeated three times in three minutes - I assumed it was an emergency and stepped out. I was greeted by someone explaining that my father had caused a car accident, and they were calling on his behalf. That someone would need to send over some money for repairs or they’d call the police. Sure. They added that their cousin, the driver, is a parolee now hold…

I live in Houston. I recently read a Houston Chronicle article describing very similar scenario. I don't have the exact link (it was from 2019), but here's one from 2013 [0].

Combined with the inability to verify the actual phone number displayed on caller ID has led me to tell all of my family to not ever accept a phone call from a number they don't recognize. There's literally zero trust in our phone system upon which we've built our modern economy.

Unfortunately that's not possible for everyone. Some people are legally required to answer the phone, always, even for numbers they don't recognize.

[0]: https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Hou...

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#215

Post by x220 »

Defenestresque wrote: post #126
Lucadg wrote: post #100

At first glance there seems to be more more malicious uses than good ones with voice. Yes, hearing someone dear to me say things he/she never said maybe comforting. Anything else? Maybe some movies with the deceased actor's voice? But what if someone who wants to hurt me sends me files (or phone calls) from the deceased person saying horrible things like: - "I am still alive but left as I was tired of you" - "oh Jan,…

People had the exact same concerns when digital image manipulation software became popular, including the "we will never be able to trust an image again" question. To answer your question, I think the biggest step we took in adapting to the ever-present risk that an image may have been manipulated is acknowledging that it's possible. As soon as people knew that something could be faked, they realized that having a pu…

Facebook users buy into doctored photos all the time. It's part of this little known phenomenon called "fake news". Video deepfakes are still time consuming and difficult to develop.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#216

Post by zaroth »

r00fus wrote: post #195
throw1234651234 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They were not delighted to hear that." - I used to do that, be a smartass. Then I realized at worst they get more info, at best, you are training them and wasting your time. Then there is that whole thing where they are getting your voice.

POTS just needs to die unless they allow for authenticated CID. One could wonder if this was some sort of conspiracy to break one of the most successful protocols in the world (or at least not update it so it dies by neglect) to increase profits by other means.

I’m convinced that POTS is already a dead man walking. The younger generation has no interest in talking on the phone in the first place, and with the amount of spam calls my phone number is absolutely the worst part of my phone.

Texting and apps is a much more pleasant way to interact with someone, and bonus of no hold times and much can be automated.

I think business texting is an upcoming startup unicorn which will be another “trivial idea packaged properly into a billion dollar product”.

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#217

Post by x220 »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #82
hurrdurr2 wrote: post #14

Autocratic regimes can rejoice...they can extract public confessions so much easier now...

Only ones that care about the appearance of propriety though, presumably most never had to try to produce convincing fakes when their word was already law?

>Only ones that care about the appearance of propriety though

Such as the United States?

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#218

Post by x220 »

Jordan Peterson got it right months ago. "It’s hard to imagine a technology with more power to disrupt. I’m already in the position (as many of you soon will be as well) where anyone can produce a believable audio and perhaps video of me saying absolutely anything they want me to say. How can that possibly be fought? More to the point: how are we going to trust anything electronically mediated in the very near future (say, during the next presidential election)?"

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-deep-fake

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#219

Post by Benjammer »

zaroth wrote: post #216
r00fus wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

POTS just needs to die unless they allow for authenticated CID. One could wonder if this was some sort of conspiracy to break one of the most successful protocols in the world (or at least not update it so it dies by neglect) to increase profits by other means.

I’m convinced that POTS is already a dead man walking. The younger generation has no interest in talking on the phone in the first place, and with the amount of spam calls my phone number is absolutely the worst part of my phone. Texting and apps is a much more pleasant way to interact with someone, and bonus of no hold times and much can be automated. I think business texting is an upcoming startup unicorn which wil…

>business texting

You mean Slack?

Re: AI Clones Your Voice After Listening for 5 Seconds (2018)

#220

Post by losteric »

inetknght wrote: post #214
arkades wrote: post #159

I once got a call while I was lecturing some students. It was repeated three times in three minutes - I assumed it was an emergency and stepped out. I was greeted by someone explaining that my father had caused a car accident, and they were calling on his behalf. That someone would need to send over some money for repairs or they’d call the police. Sure. They added that their cousin, the driver, is a parolee now hold…

I live in Houston. I recently read a Houston Chronicle article describing very similar scenario. I don't have the exact link (it was from 2019), but here's one from 2013 [0]. Combined with the inability to verify the actual phone number displayed on caller ID has led me to tell all of my family to not ever accept a phone call from a number they don't recognize. There's literally zero trust in our phone system upon wh…

Given caller ID spoofing, they really shouldn't even accept calls from numbers they do recognize... especially with tech like this. Let it go to voice mail then return the call afterwards.
Post reply on HN