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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

#371

Post by killdozer »

rockemsockem wrote: post #345
anoy8888 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Just because there's some bad stuff out there doesn't mean that opening the flood gates to higher amounts of more advanced bad stuff is acceptable. It's absolutely reasonable to look at a new technology and try to figure out if it is likely to bring about more harm than good and take action based on that assessment.

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

#373

Post by cmcconomy »

coreyisthename wrote: post #316
cpill wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, we should just make all AI research illegal. I mean, without gate keeper the world will fall apart! Did you know that you can draw and write _anything_ with a pencil! We need to get onto that next. And the internet, you can publish anything you want on there!

You seem to be intentionally missing the point.

Don't be so sure it's intentional

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

#374

Post by dang »

anoy8888 wrote: post #337
gwerbret wrote: post #319

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

That's not fair at all. YC has declined to invest in many startups that they didn't think were doing good things. I don't know anything about the thought process in this particular case but you're miles off base with "Moral is the last thing YC cared about".

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

#375

Post by burkaman »

bitL wrote: post #214
burkaman wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Expensive 2. Requires internet 3. What image do you verify? Between auto-retouching, manual retouching, compression, filetype conversion, an image file might be invisibly transformed 10 times in between capture and Instagram upload. 4. Useless for disproving fake images until every camera manufacturer in the world has implemented this. 5. Hostile to customers, now your picture doesn't get the green verified badge…

Ad 3) all of them. They will be recorded in a cryptographically recorded chain and you'll be able to backtrack all steps.

I don't think that works because there isn't One True Blockchain and it doesn't seem like there ever will be. How do you get Google, Huawei, some random photo editing app, Dropbox, Meta, etc. to all agree on the same chain?

This is a general problem that I have with a lot of blockchain ideas. For example, there are a few startups that claim to verify carbon offsets by registering them on the blockchain. There are many problems with this that we don't need to get into, but the relevant one here is: what is stopping me from registering the same offset on three different chains?

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

#376

Post by mike_d »

rcme wrote: post #356
gwerbret wrote: post #319

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?

The constant worry about malicious deployment is so tired in my opinion. The technology to clone voices exists. Your trust is audio recording should already be shaken. Trying to hobble this product on the grounds of "it's dangerous" just serves to limit creativity.

I think this in an area where there are many more malicious use cases than legitimate.

It's like spyware developers that claim their software is for remote administration of computers you own.

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

#377

Post by nico »

Amazing. Super impressive.

> The model also captures accents well and is able to speak in all English accents. Even more interesting, it can make non-English speakers speak English while preserving their original accent. Just upload a non-English speaker clip and try it yourself.

Just tried it. It was weird and funny at the same time.

When are you planning on adding other languages?

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

#378

Post by nico »

jeroenhd wrote: post #54

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…

> (https://playground.play.ht/listen/189 was pretty funny)

Warning to others wanting to click on the link: damn that was creepy.

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

#379

Post by owlbynight »

hammadh wrote: post #243
Natfan wrote: post #186

This is already being used for scams. https://playground.play.ht/listen/1079 ( https://archive.ph/HKjue ) How exactly do you expect to combat this type of content?

The intention for this playground was to let people try the model. We actually have auto moderation on the user facing platform ( https://play.ht/ ) and malicious text gets blocked and the user get flagged.

Except this post is 8 hours old and I'm still able to view this link.

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

#380

Post by andrewstuart »

nico wrote: post #378
jeroenhd wrote: post #54

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…

> ( https://playground.play.ht/listen/189 was pretty funny) Warning to others wanting to click on the link: damn that was creepy.

It was damn funny.

I’m still laughing five minutes later.

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