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They stole my voice with AI

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: They stole my voice with AI

#421

Post by johnnyanmac »

berniedurfee wrote: post #327
toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California recently signed some legislation into effect. It’s a start. Congress is working on “No Artificial Intelligence Fake Replicas And Unauthorized Duplications Act.” Still in dev in the House, but has bipartisan support. Call your congressperson, ask them to co-sponsor and/or vote for it. https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/california-bills-pro... https://salazar.house.gov/media/press-releases/salazar-intro…

No doubt it’s bipartisan! Politician’s careers live and die in the fickle Court of Public Opinion. They’re probably the most susceptible cohort to AI fakes. One of the rare times, it seems, that politician’s incentives are aligned with the populous. (Yes, I could have left that last part out.)

I'm sure that impersonation of Taylor Swift really scared the represenatives. A billionaire trying to copy the likeness of another billionaire for votes. I'm sure even some hard staunched conservatives realize how badly that can end.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#422

Post by johnnyanmac »

Filligree wrote: post #295
archagon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They moved on because OpenAI immediately removed the voice.

They removed a voice. The one that was removed didn’t sound much like her, but I guess it was the closest.

clearly her, her friends, and a lot of fans disagreed. and OpenAI didn't hedge their bets on "it didn't sound much like her", so I'm inclined to believe it was the closest.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#423

Post by johnnyanmac »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #46
Dalewyn wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be an interesting First Amendment question.

Might as well make photoshopping and manual audio tweaking / impersonation illegal, since its the same ballpark, just less effort.

I do think deepfakes or anything done to intentially mislead/impersonate should be illegal, yes. Intent is 90% of the law.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#424

Post by johnnyanmac »

123yawaworht456 wrote: post #104
Drakim wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might as well make forging signatures and identity thief legal. Who is the government to say which squiggles I may and may not write? Society is about compromises and balancing different needs against each other. Sometimes we go one way, other times we go the other way, there is no one principle that always solve any situation.

no one demands a moratorium on pens and pencils because someone might write illegal squiggles with them. we simply accept the fact that 0.0001% of squiggles will be illegal, harmful, hateful, unethical, unsafe, etc, so we can use the pen and pencil tech to write the other 99.9999% of squiggles. the current lobbying and legislating efforts seek to outlaw pens and pencils produced by anyone but a handful of US corporat…

yes, and if it became, say, 10-20% squiggles we'd have a different conversation. Those 0.0001% will be fought in court. I think it's obvious which industry I'm referring to.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#425

Post by johnnyanmac »

rldjbpin wrote: post #394

from the discourse here, the main pain point really is the accessibility to do something like this thanks to the new models. IANAL and not sure about regional precedence on these topics, but there are plenty of ads where lookalikes or voice actors are used to use someone's likeness. they are mostly in satire, but there is yet to be a case where there was a litigation over this or prior approval needed. we have ai-bas…

>they are mostly in satire

Satire is one of the few use cases of fair use that hasn't been torn down. So that tracks.

> there is yet to be a case where there was a litigation over this or prior approval needed.

There's quite a few over impersonation. Most broadcast media knows how to skirt the rules though.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#426

Post by johnnyanmac »

m3kw9 wrote: post #419

how do people know if its a very similar sounding voice, or identical?

Not to be crude, but they have ears. and you'll hear uncanny likeness of a voice you follow everyday when it comes up.

It's kind of like saying "how do we know that face is similar/identical"? Humans are surprisingly good at knowing when something feels off in other humans. Even if we lack the vocabulary to fully explain the difference.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#427

Post by johnnyanmac »

echoangle wrote: post #118
giraffe_lady wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's even worse imo. There's a reason nearly every major world belief system includes a proscription against necromancy and this is exactly what they mean. The living should not speak with the mouths of the dead.

I’m pretty sure that was a joke.

Poe's law is in full effect with AI. I've heard some absolutely sociopathic takes with what AI should be allowed to do, said with utmost sincerity.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#428

Post by johnnyanmac »

kbelder wrote: post #360
djoldman wrote: post #253

> I remember when OpenAI practically cloned Scarlett Johanssen's voice ... I don't have a dog in this fight but just to be clear, OpenAI has stated that they paid a voice actor to create the voice ("Sky") that sounds like Scarlett Johanssen. There was no "cloning" or "stealing" (that they say). https://openai.com/index/how-the-voices-for-chatgpt-were-cho...

It's interesting that this rumor has been pointed out at least three times in this discussion, and every time it's voted down. Doesn't fit with the passions of many posters, I guess.

because it's an uncharitable interpretation at best, and misleading at worst. They approached her, they refused, and then they hired a sound-a-like. That is textbook Ford v Milder.

They may have been absolutely fine if Altman never approached Scarlet. But context matters.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#429

Post by johnnyanmac »

oehpr wrote: post #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 mo…

> 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?

Jeff has worked with and endorsed some of their products before, so that puts a wrench in that theory of "well they just picked a clean voice" and makes this almost litgable.

>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.

There's the labor argument: People who's voices are samples should get a residual on the product they are being used for. Combine that with some sort of lack of liability on the subject when AI is used and we'd have a win-win.

But that requires money and companies don't want to pay other people. So we come at an impasse that leads to the luddite argument. Take the ball and go home if you don't want to pay. The fact that this comes into so few people's minds shows how successful companies are at casting off the idea of residuals.

Re: They stole my voice with AI

#430

Post by johnnyanmac »

XorNot wrote: post #32

The idea that stolen voice tones are going to matter at all is one of the shortest sighted bits of AI investment - powered by Hollywood "never make anything new" thinking. In about 5 years AI voices will be bespoke and more pleasant to listen to then any real human: they're not limited by vocal cord stress, can be altered at will, and can easily be calibrated by surveying user engagement. Subtly tweaking voice output…

>In about 5 years AI voices will be bespoke and more pleasant to listen to then any real human

I believe the point here is to litigate it before it can just freely synthesize 100 voices it stole without compensation.

We've been able to product "voices" for decades. The issue isn't the tech so much as its training set.

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