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

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

#91

Post by dxbydt »

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?

It is a big issue in India. We have a few Bollywood celebrities with "trademark voices" - voices so distinct you would instantly associate it with that celeb. There is a Huge mimicry culture with 100s of extremely talented mimics who can clone any voice. On top of which, there is a gigantic radio audience, so the celebs despite making millions in Bollywood films, advertise cement, coconut oil, fountain pens, tobacco, beauty creams, online casinos etc in radio clips, using their distinctive voice.

This makes for a rather explosive combination. I could, as some tobacco exec, hire some mimic to promote cigarette sales using a celebrity's distinct voice. By the time the regulators catch up, the spot has aired a few million times & made a potload of money.

A bunch of celebs[1][2] have trademarked their voice...but enforcement is spotty.

[1] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/amitab... [2] https://www.financialexpress.com/archive/when-celebrities-se...

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

#93

Post by burkaman »

salad-tycoon wrote: post #74
whywhywouldyou wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What are some of the differences? Besides the glaringly obvious text vs audio. I mean prior to telegraphs if I got a letter from my sweet heart with a lock of hair or something and a request for funds I’d probably believe it, especially if it took days or weeks to communicate back and forth?

Impersonating a letter is similar to having an impressionist record an impersonation of someone's voice. It's difficult, very imperfect, and not very scalable.

The analogy for this technology would be a robot that can perfectly imitate someone's handwriting and vocabulary using one letter as a reference.

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

#94

Post by ugh123 »

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?

Do you want to tell us why it should be illegal? Comparing something like this to nuclear weapons is a bit hyperbolic, at least without giving more context.

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

#95

Post by krashidov »

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?

Serious question. What is the difference in implications between this and a professional voice impersonator? I don't think it's as dangerous as we think it is. All of the consequences that Play.ht bring to society are already possible today and have been for some time. The difference is that it will be easier, but I don't think that makes it any more dangerous.

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

#96

Post by JohnFen »

oceanplexian wrote: post #73
JohnFen wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. It's already illegal to impersonate someone to steal money or scam them, and those laws were on the books before computers existed. > Of course. But that doesn't mean it's futile to try to reduce the negative outcomes. You can run something on a consumer G…

> It's already 100% futile.

I don't think so at all. There are all sorts of things you can technically do with ease that are illegal for good reason. Laws against them aren't futile.

But I admit that perhaps I'm being overly optimistic here. I'm just trying very hard to see any way that this stuff can end up not being a complete societal disaster.

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

#97

Post by detrites »

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?

It's amazing how many think declaring something illegal will stop criminally-minded people having and using it.

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

#98

Post by tempest_ »

JohnFen wrote: post #46
burkaman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PGP exists, it is just no one uses it

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

#99

Post by dejobaan »

I love the voice quality, and have been talking with a bunch of other game devs about how this and other TTS solutions have been making remarkable strides recently (also visited your GDC booth this past week!). Some years ago now, I worked on an experiment that auto-generated a gaming-centric TV show on Steam[1], but one of the big hurdles was that TTS was pretty flat (Amazon Polly); we couldn't get as expressive as [2] for instance. A few years ago, you could get emotive performances from TTS, but you needed to put in a lot of post-processing work from an audio engineer (e.g., Sonantic's TTS[3]). Stuff like ElevenLabs/PlayHT etc. seem like they'd solve that part of the problem.

As an independent game dev, I think we'll use TTS for placeholder VO a bunch - the writers can try out a pile of different material, and we only have to have a VO actor record at the end. And the current $600/year subscription for your "Ultra Realistic Voices" is a steal when used for that part of production. But for smaller studios, the pricing structure can make it tough to evaluate a new tool properly. What I really want to do is to spend 6 months having someone play around with the tech, integrating it into our toolchains, testing it out on playtesters, and so forth (and the 5,000 word free version won't do that for us). That $600 to try it out really isn't unreasonable, but when I'm also testing alongside Polly, ElevenLabs, Altered.ai, Uberwhatsit, Murf, and whatever other subscriptions, it's easy enough to say, "okay, well, maybe we don't need to add one more."

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think smaller studios, who will be the ones to experiment with/benefit from this tech most in the coming year will give it a pass because we're all penny-pinchers.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/labs/ultracast

[2] https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/store/labs/ultracast/...

[3] https://venturebeat.com/games/sonantic-uses-ai-to-infuse-emo...

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

#100

Post by hammadh »

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?

It's an effort to prevent abuse. We previously asked users to pay upfront but most people want to try it out first.
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