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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

#181

Post by hammadh »

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 are right, the technology will become ubiquitous, therefore, at least for platforms like us, it's a responsibility to have countermeasures and safeguards to prevent abuse and harm people. There'll always be people who will find ways to abuse but making it more and more difficult and evolving on that seems like a way forward.

We have these measures in place and are working on others to make sure the technology is used towards the betterment of humanity.

1/ Auto moderation on text to block harmful/malicious speech. 2/ As someone pointed out in the comments, we had a manual review process in place where the user is required to read out a consent and a member from Play.ht would review it before approving the voice. We're working on improving and adding this back. 3/ The user facing service is paywalled so we don't allow everyone in. 4/ Users trying to create malicious content are flagged and reviewed. 5/ A classifier to detect AI generated speech

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

#182

Post by bagels »

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".

People still accept contracts based (in part) on scribbles on paper. Fraud will happen, just like it does for signatures. I'm sure sometimes countermeasures will be done (including meeting in person), but it's not like video chat or phone calls will completely disappear.

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

#184

Post by juliennakache »

Looks great. I've waiting for a service like that ever since Microsoft released their paper on speech synthesis using voice samples. Feature requests: - make the voice generation available via API so devs can embed that in their app - expose a streaming API like Polly so we can feed it text in real time and get the voice as an audio stream - make it Hipaa compliant and have a plans that offer signing a BAA

I'll be your first customer if you do this! You can get in touch with me at @juliennakache

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

#185

Post by twodave »

Dowwie wrote: post #118

I recommend you immediately add identity verification (state-issued identification verification), set up appropriate secrets store for PII, and audit trail EVERYTHING your users are doing, storing the contents in a secure location. Yesterday. This service will be used to harm others, shortly. I do think that there are exciting, honest things that can be done with this service but you need to set up some friction for…

While I agree with you, the problem is far bigger than any one company in my opinion. These tools are already accessible enough to individuals that no audio or video is trustworthy, regardless of its source. I suspect we can still detect whether most faked audio/video is authentic or not algorithmically, but that's going to turn into an arms race eventually. And IMO none of the "answers" are ones that you really want to see made real, either.

We're in for some really strange times.

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

#187

Post by tomesco »

yreg wrote: post #173
abirch wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm imagining the legal implications though I'm not a lawyer. If granny gets ripped off by someone impersonating me with this site, seems like Granny could sue Play.ht. Play.ht will want to have as much information as possible about their users.

How would granny prove the scammer used play.ht?

If law enforcement ever busts a scammer and discovers a tool like this was essential to the scam, that would generate lawsuits.

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

#188

Post by rahimnathwani »

mugr wrote: post #144

This is somewhat related, though I do not know how it was made. https://lexman.rocks

They fine-tuned https://github.com/neonbjb/tortoise-tts

Neither they nor the tortoise-tts author have made public their code/techniques for fine-tuning.

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

#189

Post by snerbles »

arroz wrote: post #109
rockemsockem wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly a bit baffled at the lack of thought here. Anything written can be listened to with this tech. Any news article, any short story, a draft of a piece of writing you're working on. There is too much text for human beings to read it all. Translating from one medium to another is extremely useful.

Stop being lazy It is faster to read than to listen to something

I'm not going to read while driving.

TTS with natural inflection opens up a world of narration to stories with audiences too small for human narration.

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

#190

Post by yreg »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #180
yreg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice conversations on FaceTime, WhatsApp, etc. are already authenticated. Perhaps it's time to stop using non-VoIP calls?

Can you call your bank with that?

I wish I could. But unlike my family members, the bank doesn't authenticate me by my voice.
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