Live data from Hacker News

Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

arstechnica.com

131–140 of 195 posts

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it different than an impersonator? 1. Let's say there's 1000 people that could, or would, want to truly impersonate him in the world as a job. Now there's 8 billion who don't need rest, who don't need to practice, who won't be indistinguishable from the real thing.

Depends on how it’s represented. If you booked David Attenborough and an impersonator showed instead you’d be annoyed. If TV shows started using an impersonator instead of Attenborough but said it was him both the audience and Attenborough would be annoyed when found out.

I'm not sure what you mean here but let me make my point to the "no big deal" proponents.

Would you be ok if AI was used to impersonate you across the internet? Would you mind if I made a twitter account in your name and phone calls with your voice or upload to Youtube videos of yourself? I wouldn't do anything illegal or to make any money. It would just be entertainment impersonating your likeness and saying whatever I would want you to say.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#132
post #130

When I call my bank, they use a "voiceprint identification" that requires me to say a sentence and then matches that to my voiceprint. I am wondering if that is a massive security hole.

yes, even before this technology

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#133

When I see a lot of this voice replication I am reminded of something. (Dune series spoiler) For example, Duncan Idaho keeps being brought back with cloning tech, over and over, for centuries, because Leto II just likes him. Over and over, the same man keeps being put by the (nearly) immortal emperor's side... I ask: are we stuck as a monoculture, not making new, interesting things, but simply replicating older ones?…

I believe it is a temporary state of things, thought a sad one. ML made making mockups and mashups effectively effortless, but they are boring and should fall out of public curiosity spot soon, I believe. At the time Hollywood lawyers figure out how to put synthetic clones of big stars into AAA-movies, people will be too tired with sequels, prequels, spin-offs and stuff like that.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#135
post #16

I loved this when he posted it. Taking this a step further, and being facetious, I'm thinking of starting my own network! It's all me, all the time. Sometimes I'll be a nature show, sometimes I'll be in a spy movie, sometimes I'll have the guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 cracking jokes at how dumb I am. Can't be that hard to do what this guy did, only in twenty-four different genres, one for each hour of the d…

Have you tried to get a GPT to write a joke? It’s got a ways to go.

I've found that if you tell it to do it in the style of a particular comedian, it does an OK job:

https://chat.openai.com/share/f0d4069a-f05a-49df-824d-ac66c9...

Don't get me wrong, that isn't comedy gold...especially if you don't know the kids show I asked it to base the set on. Still, I think it did alright.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#136
post #129

Did Dante get authorization to clone Virgil's likeness—to put words in his mouth, and send him to hell to narrate the damnation of Christian popes? How would one distinguish the two? To me, this is all just a continuation of human storytelling tradition in different media.

You're correct that this "creative re-application of cultural standards", along the lines of Dante / Virgil, is what's going on here. There are some key differences. For one thing, Virgil and everyone who knew him personally had been dead for 1500 years, while David Attenborough is still alive, and those who know him personally will live for another 50 years. For another, it was absolutely clear to everyone that Virg…

- "For another, it was absolutely clear to everyone that Virgil didn't actually say the things Dante put in his mouth;"

It was far worse than that!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil#Legends

The whole thing's a mess. It'd be hard to draw a bright line between the crazy bullshit medievals* literally believed about Virgil, and the poetic, metaphorical bullshit Dante wrote about him.

(*I actually had a Latin professor in the 21st century sincerely advocate that Eclogues interpretation. There's a mode of thinking behind this stuff that, to put it tactfully, confounds people about what's the difference between fiction and reality).

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#137

One area where this kind of technique would be a game changer, I imagine, is for blind people to have their surroundings narrated in real time. For example, through a pair of glasses with a camera for input, and an earphone to listen to the continuous narration. I heard about an online service where people can sign up to help the blind by describing visual scenes that they capture on their mobile. There must be compa…

I know yours is a small comment in a huge sea, but how would the comments know what the blind wanted to see? If I could describe what i can see now it would be a long list left to right. Do i include the sunlight reflecting off an industrial chimney? Is the chimney important? I do enjoy hallucinogenics which, to me, remove the very filters that keep us sane. As much as I love the problem, filtration will always be th…

It’s a hard problem for sure. I guess You fine tune to their preferences. Everyone gets the “Giant bus headed straight towards you!!!!” Alert. But let’s say you’re at the grocery store, maybe it’s clever enough to read the aisle descriptions for example.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#138
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried to get a GPT to write a joke? It’s got a ways to go.

It’s not funny because it’s “aligned”. You can’t be funny with all those restrictions.

If you're not capable of being funny within restrictions, then the problem is you, not the restrictions.

Transgressive humour can be funny; having to be transgressive for humour is lazy.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#139
post #130

When I call my bank, they use a "voiceprint identification" that requires me to say a sentence and then matches that to my voiceprint. I am wondering if that is a massive security hole.

I haven't seen any sort of argument for why it would be secure. I guess it's probably no worse than the other common banking practice, one-factor auth using a 4-6 digit numeric only password.

Re: Unauthorized "David Attenborough" AI clone narrates developer's life, goes viral

#140
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the phrase "artificial scarcity" to describe someone's skills is ridiculous. A voice actor or artist being paid for their skills is not rent seeking.

Sure, their creation is held behind legal walls in order to create, by definition, an artifical scarcity from which it derives its monetary value. If it was not protected by such a wall, and was not scarce, it would have no monetary value. No, I don't think the inherent value in their talent is artificial, but I _do_ think that the monetary system we've built around such things as a necessity to survive in our modern…

>Sure, their creation is held behind legal walls in order to create, by definition, an artifical scarcity from which it derives its monetary value. If it was not protected by such a wall, and was not scarce, it would have no monetary value.

That's... not artificial scarcity. By definition (and using your own words) it is actual scarcity.

A person's performance -- which is more than just their voice reading lines -- is not held back behind some imaginary wall. It's literally limited by the hours in the day, the person's ability to get from place A to place B, etc.; it's not like David Attenborough is a Santa Claus figure and can be in California narrating a documentary and in New York providing some random dude a personal voiceover for his life simultaneously.

Post reply on HN