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They stole my voice with AI

jeffgeerling.com

361–370 of 461 posts

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#361
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what if AI was used to imitate a person saying something blasphemeous? > My country is already has blasphemy lynching mobs in your case the problem is not AI, it’s your country.

Your country might not have lynching mobs, but you can't deny there are certain taboo topics in your society also, certain slurs and other opinions which would take you ages to clense and even then never fully. If an AI fake-porn of some ordinary person involving a minor was unleashed, think of the utter shame and horror they would be treated by people for the rest of their lives, even if it were proven false. No one…

Next or next next generation would be used to it. Digital content would be consumed differently, with automatical scepticism or so...

Remember when people believed that camera took our soul when we are caotured on image?

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's because I have no knowledge of lynch mobs in my country but I find that fear is a bad adviser. I think currently there is no way back in AI development. I read Microsoft is getting a failed nuclear reactor repaired to power the power hungry AI. The only way forward is making sure most people know that digital content can be easily faked. If you hand out good faker tools for free, it will happen faster

There is absolutely a way back if laws change. It's that simple, people need to stop pretending its inevitable when it absolutely isn't.

International law like in... human rights? Are those currently being enforced?

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#363
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much? This IP/copyright mentality is so 90s/2000s. Brings back memories of Napster. This Jeff Geerling which I have never heard of will cry until some Spotify of AI appears and pay him some pennies. Maybe he wants to be the James Hetfield/Metallica of this generation. This guy doesn't have 1/10000 of the relevance Metallica had at the time tho.

The danger of this shit can not be understated. Four years ago already there was a video where a deepfake of a president of the USA read a speech: In Event of Moon Disaster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWLadJFI8Pk we of course know Nixon never gave this speech. What happens when this "AI" is used to sway an election? Last month a family got hospitalized after eating mushrooms they found and identified from a AI ge…

> What happens when this "AI" is used to sway an election?

It already happened and the world went merrily on its way towards wherever the hell it goes.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#364

> I remember when OpenAI practically cloned Scarlett Johanssen's voice Except that never happened and the voice belonged to a completely different voice actress and Scarlett Johanssen had exactly zero right to prevent this person from making money as a voice actress lending it to AI. These complaints remind me a little bit of the story that a man complained that his photo was used to illustrate the article about how…

They reached out to Scarlett Johanssen. She said no. So they found a soundalike and Tweeted out references to the movie Her (starring Scarlett Johanssen as an AI chat bot) in the days leading up to launch. Scummy as fuck from OpenAI regardless of the technical legal rights and issues involved.

What's scummy about it? If you want a specific kind of voice and approach one person about it but she doesn't agree what's wrong with asking another one?

If there were just two blonds in the world, one famous and the other not and you wanted a blonde actress for the role and she said no is it scummy to hire the other one?

Is it scummy to hire "discount" Matt Damon instead of Matt Damon?

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#365

> I remember when OpenAI practically cloned Scarlett Johanssen's voice Except that never happened and the voice belonged to a completely different voice actress and Scarlett Johanssen had exactly zero right to prevent this person from making money as a voice actress lending it to AI. These complaints remind me a little bit of the story that a man complained that his photo was used to illustrate the article about how…

OprnAI says it never happened. They also took the voice down despite having it front and center at release time. And let's not forget that, if they didn't want people to think of Scarlett Johansson, then there would be no reason for their CEO to tweet "Her".

"Her" is a brilliant movie about AI. The tweet was on point. And apparently they didn't give much crap about the specific voice since they taken it down because of mildly bad publicity. It was just supposed to be nice bonus gesture.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My country is already has blasphemy lynching mobs based on the slightest perceived insult, real or imagined. They will mob you, lynch you, burn your corpse, then distribute sweets while you family hide and issue video messages denouncing you and forgiving the mob. Blasphemy laws—and the violence that sometimes accompanies them—are a cultural issue, not a technological one. When the risk of mob violence is in play,…

You are focusing too much on my specific problem instead of using it as a guide to understand your own situation. Sure we have mobs and you don't, but we are talking about AI here. Infact let's imagine a totally different culture to illustrate my point. Imagine you are an Israeli, and people in your office have a habit of sending Whatsapp voice notes to confirm various things instead of calls, because that way you ca…

I rephrased my comment probably right before you posted this because I felt it was too confrontational.

The problem of people manufacturing evidence by using synthesized voices should eventually result in audio voice recordings losing importance from an evidentiary standpoint. In fact, the quicker the use of it occurs, the quicker it will get devalued. And that is good. Someday soon, someone who sounds like the CEO won't be able to drain the company bank account based solely on trusting his voice. And hopefully, along the same lines, a voice recording of Person X blaspheming will lose its evidential power since it will be so easy to manufacture.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#367

This whole argument rests on the absurd assumption that you can "own" a voice as if it's property. Does this mean people can own the patterns of vibration in air? It's completely nonsensical.

>Does this mean people can own the patterns of vibration in air? It's completely nonsensical. If you argue similarly, then the whole juridical system is nonsensical, because everything is just particles and waves, and different configurations thereof - not to mention the many protected things that are acts, which are neither particles nor waves, and are completely made up. I'd say it's desirable to regulate something…

That wasn't my point. We can own physical items, land etc. Because it's a scarce resource. If me "owning" something doesn't prevent you from also "owning" it, the concept of ownership of that item is absurd.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#368

This whole argument rests on the absurd assumption that you can "own" a voice as if it's property. Does this mean people can own the patterns of vibration in air? It's completely nonsensical.

You can own your likeness. Does that mean you can own the photos that represent your face? Yes, yes you can. Why should you voice be different?

> You can own your likeness.

How?

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#369

This whole argument rests on the absurd assumption that you can "own" a voice as if it's property. Does this mean people can own the patterns of vibration in air? It's completely nonsensical.

"Why should child porn be illegal? It's just a pattern of bits on a computer!" Describing a reasonable legal principle in terms of physics phenomena does not make it unreasonable.

You're missing the point. Ownership implies the resource is scarce. If the resource is a pattern, which cannot be physically owned and my usage of the pattern doesn't prevent others from using the pattern, it's nonsensical to say it can be owned by anybody.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#370
I want to ask and answer two of my own questions here:

1. Why clone Jeff's voice?

When I was messing with stable diffusion using Automatic1111's interface, I noticed it came with a big list of artists to add to the prompt to stylize the image in some way. There was a big row in the media about ai art reproducing artists work and many artists came forward feeling it was a personal attack. But... I mean the truth is more general than that. When I pressed a button to insert a random name into a prompt, my goal was not "yes give me this person's art for free", it was "style this somehow".

I wasn't personally interested in any particular artist, I honestly would have preferred a bunch of sliders.

Jeff here is clearly a good speaker. That's a practiced talent and voice actors exist because it's hard. Elecrow wanted a voice over and they wanted it to be as good as they could make it. Jeff is very good. So did they want Jeff?

I think what they really wanted was a good and cogent narration with the tenor of a person. Not a machine making noises that sound like english. If they had an easy way to get that, we wouldn't be talking about it here.

2. What function does copyright serve?

Well. I think a reasonable argument would be that if people were able to reproduce your work for free, you would quickly find yourself without a monetary incentive to make more of it.

So. What happens if you combine answer 1 with answer 2?

I think it leads to: "We should consider making it illegal to automatically reproduce the work of an artisan.", you know, the luddic argument. An argument that has been perceived to be, more or less, settled.

So it seems to me: That for individuals, harms matter, and for society, it doesn't.

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