This recently got worse, they claimed to have the OK from his widow. Turns out not so much ... https://twitter.com/OttaviaBourdain/status/14158894550057164...
They really need a way for someone to trademark their voice.
You wouldn’t download a voice
Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
161–170 of 202 posts
Re: Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
#162I get why this is newsworthy, but I don't get why it's an ethical problem. How is it any different from hiring a really good Bourdain impersonator to read the email? Lots of celebrities have pitch-perfect impersonators; is this a thing we worried about when it wasn't AI doing the impersonation?
I think the concerns are 1, this is passed off without real buy in from next of kin for a person who would be against it if he were alive. And 2, I think the attention and concern is heightened because this shows it can be done at scale to anyone with ease instead of having very talented people individually read off scripts into a mic. Consider getting a voicemail from your dead grandmother tomorrow. Public figure or…
People would pay for that. To get a voicemail from someone you loved would be great. Even better a conversation.
We hang photos to remember. A voicemail or more would help our kids hear grandma.
Re: Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
On which timescale does something become historical? Are the Beatles historical, to you maybe not but possibly to your children? Where is the line you’re drawing? If I’m honest humans have never done the moral thinking, we largely just middle through and hope to get away with it.
Idk if historical is based on time. I think intention is more important. if you recreate the Beatles purely for profit then it seems unethical and disrespectful. if you want to keep someone's voice for record keeping or something educational that seems different
Why do people in this thread seem so focused on profit? Everything has a need to make money or do you all work for free? Why is trying to make money on some hopefully valuable art you’ve produced bad?
Re: Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was the Sicily episode- Bourdain wanted to show the ugly, scammy underbelly of Sicily I think. This kind of thing is there in a lot of the Mediterranean, but it unfairly makes all of Sicily look bad. I had a bad impression of the whole island until I learned more about it years later. Sicily is mostly nice with a few pockets of unsavoriness like anywhere, not a mafia island. In my opinion too many episodes are l…
Ofter you see what you want to see in the world. As much as I adore Bourdain, I have to admit he was undoubtably jaded and there were trips where that colored everything. For many, depression comes in waves and lasts for periods of time. He showed a lot of the good and bad in these places, but everywhere has a bit of both.
Bourdain put out an incredible body of work overcoming a lot of lifelong issues and I still love his show. Its just recently seeing someone like Rick Stein in the Mediterranean I realized its completely possible to do an area justice while also highlighting its best features. I feel like Anthony Bourdain with his rebel image would worry about being seen as a sellout or too bourgeois if he went to a fancy restaurant in Sicily (unless he went ironically and didn't enjoy it). I question my perception of some countries I know only/mostly from Parts Unknown now.
Re: Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
#165So does anyone have a link to the video?
Re: Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
His widow did not provide consent [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/OttaviaBourdain/status/14158894550057164...
She's not his widow, she's his estranged ex-wife. I should hope people's ex-wives don't get authority over their lives later (unless it's related to kids/shared-assets/etc). The family giving consent is way more relevant.
That’s a response to that the movie people stated they cleared the scenes with his widow.
Re: Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think my family should have the ability to make decisions regarding my likeness. My likeness is one of those things which is just totally 100% mine. I married my wife and had kids with her and would want her to have all of my money if I died but wouldn’t want her to be able to license my voice and face to promote Wheaties cereal or something. It shouldn’t be allowed unless the person explicitly grants those r…
When did you get a copyright on your likeness? Your likeness might not be unique or unique enough for others to identify a distinct you. 1,000 Elvis' likenesses disagree.
You get a copyright automatically on anything you write... why not on your likeness (insofar as it specifically refers to you)? The 1,000 Elvises are part of the problem: although Elvis chose to be an extremely public figure, I'm not sure he would want his likeness to essentially be a cartoon character for Vegas weddings and the like. I would say that a person's likeness should be off-limits to everyone, unless specifically authorized while alive, for the duration of the copyright term (70 years after death), and then become public domain (family members should not be monetizing their relative's likeness after their death, unless specifically authorized to do so).
Re: Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I understand it (I read this on Twitter so massive grain of salt etc.) the family concented to this explicitly. Would you feel better if it was a voice actor who could read Bourdain’s email in a perfect mimic? What about historical recreations, would you object to computers being involved in, say, recreating Abraham Lincoln’s voice? Does the age of the subject matter? I think the squeamishness about AI as it becom…
Any of those are fine - with disclosure. It seems pretty clear that in this case, they were less than transparent. > “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the A.I., and you’re not going to know,” Neville told the reviewer, Helen Rosner. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.” ...or we can have it sooner, on Twi…
Call me cynical, but a documentary needs publicity to be successful. It seems to me this ethical dilemma gives just about the right amount of outrage for people to pay attention without it overly hurting the film maker's reputation.
Perhaps we'll see a mea culpa later on, where he will say he misjudged the amount of outrage, which is not a real apology, so lots of commenters will jump on that thereby providing even more publicity.
Re: Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
#169We're running up towards "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind." and it is appropriate. It isn't wrong to replace a human with a machine, I'm not going after calculators, spreadsheets, or farm machinery. What is to come though is a moral imperative that making machines mimic people is deeply wrong. Our worldviews, values, and judgements are based on interacting with other humans and to have t…
> Wait for a smoking gun event like a car driving itself into a gathering of schoolchildren to get things started.
The actual gun industry has somehow managed to avoid being sunk by this problem by keeping the blame on humans despite a school shooting every few months in the US.
Cars will be explicitly advertised that you can turn the automation on, go to sleep, and arrive at the destination, but if the automation hits anything the sleeping human will remain liable. The misleading advert will not.
Re: Voice clone of Anthony Bourdain prompts synthetic media ethics questions
#170A deepfake audio + video with mask of the mayor of ethekwini was used to encourage people to continue looting during recent riots in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It’s scary.
Googling "Deep fake ethekwini" brings up... this comment.
South African media and public consciousness has not grown to accommodate the "deepfake" idea yet. It's no surprise Google searches for deepfake come up empty.
I've consumed lots of random media from many WhatsApp and Telegram groups. I've lost track of lots of it in the stream of information. That stuff doesn't get indexed on Google. The media narrative is tightly controlled, ministers claimed things were under control on TV whilst us on the ground knew this was false. Zello has also been extremely useful for community security. But trust has been an issue because of the open nature of these platforms.
I've been trying for this whole week to come up with tech solutions to this, but there are also social issues technology alone cannot overcome. Eg: Community members organised in adhoc security patrol groups engaged in friendly fire because they did not know they were friendlies. A telegram bot to query registration plates makes sense...but that leads us back to apartheidesque access control (no!) and the issue of trusting the entity that controls the db.
This is the best reference I could find of it in 'mainstream' (News24) media: https://youtu.be/Jq14RiZyJRA?t=3767
ps: n8n is a great tool!