Hi! Congrats on launching! We recently evaluated play.ht for TTS but decided against it because you had an async API which was harder to implement. Alternatives have sync APIs (including Google Cloud). Do you have plans to release a sync client for standard TTS?
Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
331–340 of 471 posts
Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
#332Extra points for adding the ability to adjust individual performances with tags or "style matching", like Img2Img.
I'd be willing to spend money to get that ability, possibly by the minute (say, $1/minute) or a monthly fee or whatever.
Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
#333Earlier 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
Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> There is too much text for human beings to read it all. so your logic is that all that text should be audio and people will consume more? Because I got news for you, reading is faster than listening.
I think the case for having all text be listenable is pretty clear. We're all really busy and often our hands are busy but we're not doing something that mentally stimulating. This is an ideal time to listen to an audiobook, a blog, the news, or whatever else you'd like.
Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
#335Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
#336Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
#337Given the very ( very , VERY) obvious concerns associated with malicious deployment of this tech, and the minimal/largely ineffectual countermeasures deployed by the founders, what surprises me the most is that YC gave this startup its stamp of approval. It used to be that they offered at least a basic sanity check to anything they funded. Is this now getting lost as they scale up their funding operations?
Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
#338What are the "legitimate" uses cases for this kind of service where they would expect to make money from individuals who want their voices cloned? Dub movies? Audiobooks?
Or maybe a comedic angle of audio books read by unusual accents? Imagine Harry Potter read by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Re: Launch HN: Play.ht (YC W23) – Generate and clone voices from 20 seconds of audio
#339Given the very ( very , VERY) obvious concerns associated with malicious deployment of this tech, and the minimal/largely ineffectual countermeasures deployed by the founders, what surprises me the most is that YC gave this startup its stamp of approval. It used to be that they offered at least a basic sanity check to anything they funded. Is this now getting lost as they scale up their funding operations?
What is in this demo is a very rate-limited, early version of our new model. We have many mitigations in place to increase the safety of our main product (Play.ht); 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
#340Given the very ( very , VERY) obvious concerns associated with malicious deployment of this tech, and the minimal/largely ineffectual countermeasures deployed by the founders, what surprises me the most is that YC gave this startup its stamp of approval. It used to be that they offered at least a basic sanity check to anything they funded. Is this now getting lost as they scale up their funding operations?
What is in this demo is a very rate-limited, early version of our new model. We have many mitigations in place to increase the safety of our main product (Play.ht); I mentioned some of that here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35331310
How do you address the civil and criminal liability of that?