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

news.ycombinator.com

201–210 of 471 posts

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

#201
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

It doesn't have to be PGP specifically to satisfy the goal of strong keypair-based security finally having traction — does it?

USB etc hardware keys can be used protect accounts like Gmail, Coinbase, web hosting services, many more now.

Fun fact: it's possible to receive Facebook user notification emails encrypted against your public PGP key.

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would mention something to that effect in the modal because it wasn't clear to me why it was asking for card details at that point for "$0.00/mo" (though I guessed the reason). Maybe something like "To prevent abuse, we require card details, but you won't be charged", but worded better.

Thank you. Would fix this.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah because that's working great for crypto lol

What do you mean? KYC is required on every US exchange.

Exactly, that's why the crypto space doesn't have any scams

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

#205
post #198

Tried it out and it made me sound British (I'm Australian, but I only have a mild accent). It seems to have gotten my tone of voice close but not my accent. And then my pacing seems really off. Even a simple "Hey this is afro88. How's it going?" sounded inhuman.

You can try the high-fidelity voice cloning here https://play.ht/voice-cloning/

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

#206

I think this tech is super cool, but why is the API priced with subscription tiers rather than just some per-word rate? It would make it easier to develop with and budget for if the cost was based on actual usage (like the OpenAI API is, for example).

Yes, we are working on making the API pay as you go soon. Thanks for the feedback!

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

#207

Hey HN, we are Mahmoud and Hammad Are you though? You might just be computer-generated. While I'm very impressed with this technically (and as a pro-audio person I feel validated to see my predictions of a few years back coming true so dramatically), I don't see anything about risk management in here. Your tech absolutely will get used by scammers, given the overabundance of voice data on the open internet. How are y…

We have many mitigations in place to increase the safety of this service, I mentioned some of that here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35331310

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

#208

Is there any free open-source alternative available to voice cloning, how far whisper goes?

Whisper does speech-to-text.

And there are open-source alternatives but I don’t think the quality is super good.

There’s also enough information out there to do this yourself with a bunch of GPU time, I have some ideas I want to try out but don’t have the (GPU) time.

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PGP doesn't help you with phone and video calls.

not really the point. a PGP-style tech could easily exist for phone or video tomorrow, if it doesn't already. but PGP-style tech for email (called "PGP") has existed for 32 years and basically no one uses it. whether or not the tech exists doesn't matter nearly as much as whether or not people actually use it.

I'm unclear as to what your point is, then...

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

#210
post #165

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 demo page says 'Recently generated', you have listened to the last snippet someone made.

I know the demo page was user generated. My Musk comment referred to this page: https://play.ht/ultra-realistic-voices/
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