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Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio

#41

Post by delgaudm »

devmunchies wrote: post #19
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #17

https://play.ht/app/voice-cloning > Clone a voice now Pops a modal: Try Voice Cloning for Free! Enter a credit card for $0.00/mo with no other information on screen Bounce. Why not let me play around with it a little without asking for a credit card?

I think if you are cloning voices, you should be required to have a credit card or some other KYC identifier. Even if it's free. This kind of highly abusable tech should have a paper trail IMO.

As someone whose voice has been cloned without my consent, I could not agree more.

Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio

#43

Post by lfciv »

Seems like we'll sort of inevitably end up with a sort of cross-site verifiable identity on the internet. All content requiring some sort of verified user backing it. Generally will be interesting to see what an internet with less anonymity looks like.

Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio

#44

Post by whywhywouldyou »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #35
phkahler wrote: post #18

This is the first startup here where I think the tech should essentially be illegal. It's cool tech, yes I'm impressed at the achievement. Nuclear weapons are impressive too. OTOH this kind of thing is getting easier and easier to do, so what's a realistic way forward?

>Introducing the National Postal Service - send a letter to anyone for a nominal fee. No need for a personal courier, armed escort, or patrician status. >This is the kind of thing that should be illegal. Now, any Plebian could essentially write a letter to anyone, impersonating anyone. Forged letters could drag us into a war with Persia - for Jupiter's sake!

This is a hilariously bad attempt at discrediting the original argument. There's a vast difference between forging a letter and replicating the unique vocal fingerprint of any human being, on demand.

I suppose if we approach the point that we can create robotic clones of anyone, anywhere, that look, sound, and move like anyone on the planet, that will be just like the post office too, right?

Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio

#45

Post by bitL »

burkaman wrote: post #23
phkahler wrote: post #18

This is the first startup here where I think the tech should essentially be illegal. It's cool tech, yes I'm impressed at the achievement. Nuclear weapons are impressive too. OTOH this kind of thing is getting easier and easier to do, so what's a realistic way forward?

I guess eventually people will go back to only meeting face to face for important communications. I don't know what the way forward is for news. I truly do not understand people like these founders, obviously they understand the future they're creating. "If not us, someone else would do it" is not an excuse. Neither is "I like money".

There are some cool uses like dubbing movies in foreign languages while keeping the original "voice styles" or having your long dead relatives talking to you in some memorabilia etc. It could also cause unexpected creativity explosion e.g. in games or fan fiction movies. To avoid misuses we might perhaps find the only good use of blockchain.

Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio

#46

Post by JohnFen »

burkaman wrote: post #23
phkahler wrote: post #18

This is the first startup here where I think the tech should essentially be illegal. It's cool tech, yes I'm impressed at the achievement. Nuclear weapons are impressive too. OTOH this kind of thing is getting easier and easier to do, so what's a realistic way forward?

I guess eventually people will go back to only meeting face to face for important communications. I don't know what the way forward is for news. I truly do not understand people like these founders, obviously they understand the future they're creating. "If not us, someone else would do it" is not an excuse. Neither is "I like money".

> I guess eventually people will go back to only meeting face to face for important communications

This seems to be the only realistic future. This sort of technology literally makes it impossible to trust anything electronic.

People were worried about the balkanization of the internet, but now they look like optimists.

Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio

#48

Post by skybrian »

phkahler wrote: post #18

This is the first startup here where I think the tech should essentially be illegal. It's cool tech, yes I'm impressed at the achievement. Nuclear weapons are impressive too. OTOH this kind of thing is getting easier and easier to do, so what's a realistic way forward?

You may get your wish. The FTC posted an article about this a week ago. [1]

> The FTC Act’s prohibition on deceptive or unfair conduct can apply if you make, sell, or use a tool that is effectively designed to deceive – even if that’s not its intended or sole purpose.

It seems like an awfully broad rule? But they probably could go after this startup if they noticed it.

There are some kinds of businesses where making sure the regulators like what you’re doing is pretty much a prerequisite. On the other hand, plenty of companies got where they are today by pushing the limits.

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/03/chatbots-...

Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio

#50

Post by JohnFen »

oceanplexian wrote: post #39
phkahler wrote: post #18

This is the first startup here where I think the tech should essentially be illegal. It's cool tech, yes I'm impressed at the achievement. Nuclear weapons are impressive too. OTOH this kind of thing is getting easier and easier to do, so what's a realistic way forward?

Making then the illegal would accomplish nothing since it's already out in the wild. You can generate audio with high quality on fine-tuned versions of Tortoise TTS, which was originally trained on a cluster of NVIDIA 3090's, so it's within reach for any smart person to train a from-scratch model on consumer hardware. Realistically? We have to accept that this tech exists and there will be both positive and negative…

> Making then the illegal would accomplish nothing since it's already out in the wild.

Not true. Making it illegal wouldn't make it nonexistent -- that's true. But making it illegal would provide at least some method of mitigating some of the harm.

That's more than what we have right now.

> We have to accept that this tech exists and there will be both positive and negative outcomes from it.

Of course. But that doesn't mean it's futile to try to reduce the negative outcomes.

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