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

news.ycombinator.com

341–350 of 471 posts

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

#341

What we really need is something on par with this or Eleven Labs that's open source. Then the real fun will begin. At this point I think it's just a matter of time.

Join the LAION Discord #audio-generation - some of us are literally working on this right now.

Awesome to hear! Joined!!

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

#342
A couple criticisms. Firstly, the accept ToS checkbox is comically small, about the size of a period. Second, "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" is a typography test; that sentence contains every letter in the alphabet. For voice samples, Harvard sentences are preferable.

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

#344
post #175

It's astounding to me how quickly HN turned into "We need to track people who use technology in case they use it for crime" when it comes to this. No we don't! Technology does not need to be relentlessly tracked by government agencies "for your protection" - haven't you learned anything?

[deleted]

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

#345

Given 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?

Moral is the last thing YC cared about . In fact Paul wrote an essay about good founders being the kind of people who tend to break rules. Rules, laws , morality are for other people

I feel silly for saying this, but it's very obvious that rule breaking is not the same as acting immorally.

Machines should be able to speak in realistic voices. Every cool future I can imagine includes that. Why muzzle it just because people can be scammed with it?? People get scammed by jpgs, random people calling and saying they're from the bank or the IRS. I'm really not interested in limiting what humanity can accomplish to account for folks getting scammed. Many of them will get scammed anyway. What we should do is make it easier for these individuals to learn how to not get scammed or to come up with scam insurance for the ridiculously gullible. I'm just spitballing, but banning cool technology because people can be scammed is overkill.

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

#346
post #335

What 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?

If I’m an author and I want to create an audiobook, I might be able to create the whole thing after reading just the first page.

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

#347

Given 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?

Moral is the last thing YC cared about . In fact Paul wrote an essay about good founders being the kind of people who tend to break rules. Rules, laws , morality are for other people

I think it's impossible to write anything with nuance on the Internet, as it is always taken out of context and used as a gross caricature of the original point, as you have done.

I'm quite familiar with pg's essay, and the idea that he's arguing that "Rules, laws , morality are for other people" is laughable. Sure, it's fair to argue against his point, but one of the main thing he highlights in his essay is clearly knowing the difference between rules and laws that are morally important, versus ones that came about through regulatory capture or "tradition".

Most societies have at least some tradition of celebrating "good trouble".

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

#348
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The mitigations don't seem to address targeted attacks that I'd think you can assume will happen. How do you address the civil and criminal liability of that?

Are there even any criminal laws against this? I mean, it strikes me that there should be, but my non lawyerly self has never heard of any.

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

#349

Given 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

Your mitigations are so bad, you must know that they are almost useless. No website has ever kept up with spam by individually checking every complaint, and you would only stop people after they've already recorded large amounts of output from a stolen voice.

On the other hand, as you also know, you could easily put a much stronger safeguard on by making people say a short prepared statement and only clone voices who have said that statement. You do not appear to have done that. Why not, except it would make it harder to voice steal?

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

#350
post #326
post #175

It's astounding to me how quickly HN turned into "We need to track people who use technology in case they use it for crime" when it comes to this. No we don't! Technology does not need to be relentlessly tracked by government agencies "for your protection" - haven't you learned anything?

The same applies in reverse. Technology must not be allowed to do whatever it wants without control. Haven't you learned anything?

Examples?
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