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

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51–60 of 471 posts

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

#51
post #3

play.ht user here! Awesome service and thanks to you guys I made my first 50$ while generating voices and using them in a short explainer video.

nice voting ring you got there

Are the founder's names causing you panic? can't you appreciate a good startup?

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

#52

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!

Yes, good point, mail fraud used to be a major problem and we started passing laws to deal with it 150 years ago.

https://www.uspis.gov/history-spotlight/history-of-the-mail-...

Maybe we'll need a new specialized law enforcement agency like the Postal Inspectors to deal with the inevitable wave of AI-assisted crime.

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

#54
Listening to the demos I'm not entirely convinced by this (https://playground.play.ht/listen/189 was pretty funny). I wonder if this company will end up taking down (and subsequently pricing out most people using this tech for fun) arbitrary voice generation just like its competitors have so far.

Going to the demo page and hearing a random snippet of Musk-worship was pretty weird. Out of all audio tracks to place at the top of your demos, you chose this?

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

#55
The world is going to become a much worse place over the next few years. I want to be an optimist, but it will take huge leaps in humanity's societal structures for AI not to be a net negative for the vast majority of people on this planet in the short term.

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

#56
post #43

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.

> Generally will be interesting to see what an internet with less anonymity looks like.

It will be much more dangerous, in all probability.

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

#57
post #4

How do you assert that the cloned voice has been truly permitted by the voice owner? I've had my voice cloned without my consent by other people using Descript and Eleven Labs. What is your process for verifying consent?

TIL, the Booth Junkie is on HN. Love your work, sir.

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

#58
post #28

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?

What if the voice sample is somebody saying they give specific consent to be cloned by that service? You could of course clone a voice to generate that "consent" -- but at that point there's no additional harm done because they'd already have the clone. It's unrealistic that this tech won't exist somewhere, even if the big actors stay away for ethical reasons. A voice auth practice strikes me as a good compromise.

[deleted]

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

#59
post #53

I'm having a hard time coming up with a non-nefarious use case for this.

Voice generator tech has created some decent surreal memes (like audio recordings of Biden, Obama, and Trump playing video games together).

Outside of memes or maybe the occasional well-intentioned prank, I really can't think of anything either.

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