Live data from Hacker News

Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

waxy.org

121–130 of 207 posts

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#121
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright is complex. And artist's rights are outside of copyright, in some respects. An example.. in the past, painters have had their works bought, and then hung in unfavourable conditions. Or in places/locations, which reflect poorly upon the work of art. Artists have sued, and won, to have artwork moved, shown differently, or force-sold back to the artist. Now, everything you say is copyright... you. At least in…

> Artists have sued, and won, to have artwork moved, shown differently, or force-sold back to the artist. That seems insane to me. Do you have specific examples?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights

"Independent of the author's economic rights, and even after the transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the said work, which would be prejudicial to the author's honor or reputation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors%27_rights

"The authors of dramatic works (plays, etc.) also have the right to authorize the public performance of their works (Article 11, Berne Convention)."

"The protection of the moral rights of an author is based on the view that a creative work is in some way an expression of the author's personality: the moral rights are therefore personal to the author and cannot be transferred to another person except by testament when the author dies."

"“Author” is used in a very wide sense, and includes composers, artists, sculptors and even architects"

Architects can deny changes in interior design: Lighting, artwork, etc., long after the building is finished. Just a few days ago I talked with a theater director: The author of the original work has the right to deny a production, for whatever reason, e.g. if they don't like the nose of an actor.

I bet my voice is mine under most jurisdictions (and I mean most; the Berne convention has been signed by 181 countries), even if I signed a contract that gives you wide permission to use it. And if I didn't, you can't use it outside of the very narrow scope of the work I produced for you. Even if you simply want to reuse an existing recording in another context.

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#122
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voices are uncopyrightable, but impersonation isn't legal (see Midler v. Ford, for a notable case), so I don't think the situation is totally clear.

As long as they don’t claim the voice is the original actor (misspell the name perhaps, or the Hollywood classic ‘based on’), they won’t be impersonating no?

The Ford ad didn't say it was Midler, they just implied it by using her song with a soundalike. There was another similar case with a parody ruled as impersonation. I don't think there's good precedent for exactly where that line is drawn.

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#123
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> voice actors are fearing that the ability for generative AI to replicate their voices may cost them work I'm not sure how to feel about that. I'm against the idea that some people "deserve" being paid for being lucky born with an interesting voice. On the other hand, the world always worked like that. And, say, hard-working farmer or doctor were also lucky being born with necessary traits to make for their living,…

Voice acting is more than just talking into a microphone. It's a skill not limited to the quality of voice.

You could have made that argument more effectively in the past when voice actors had to be able to mimic multiple voices (Dan Castlenetta, Mel Blanc, etc.). Nowadays, we're seeing more and more shows where the voices of the characters are just... the normal voice of the voice actor.

Of course it's not totally devoid of skill, you need to be able to emote, inflect, and convey emotion, but the bar is far far lower.

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this community was available for crawling then LLM would crawl it and there would be no value in participating in the community because you can just ask the LLM about all that, no?

If the value your community provides is low enough that it can be effectively replaced by a general purpose LLM, then it should be. The value of a community should be pushing the boundaries of knowledge, not gatekeeping it. C'mon, this is hacker news, what happened to "information should be free"?

[deleted]

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#125
post #4

My absolute favorite application of this tech so far is The Beach Boys singing 'Hurt'. It's the first time I seriously didn't notice any artifacts, and it just works so well even though it really shouldn't. Enjoy: https://youtu.be/gmNSFqyg_Z8

Where is my mind by Sinatra - https://youtu.be/BO4cKQ8DxYU?si=uzF_TdrQoZOAOlEc

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#126
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN isn't the only community to write for. While most people here seem to be unsympathetic to such job concerns, unconventional articles do hit the front page from time to time. I'd like to read it, in any case.

+1, I would also like to read it

I would as well. It isn't that I'm unsympathetic, it is just that we haven't outlawed technology that put others out of work, and I'm curious why we would decide as a society this time should be different. If there are good reasons I want to know.

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find interesting is this aspect that eventually, these companies will hire some college kids who needs a couple thousand bucks and a free pizza. Have them read the right scripts. Sign the right 'give everything away' contract and just forever use their voice. Or do it sneaky. Have a voice assistant and in your ToS 'we can use a copy of your voice for anything'. The existing voice actors will be just out of wor…

I have said this will initially be sold as a feature on things like Audiobooks. Pick your book, pick your reader and away it goes. The Diary of Anne Frank read by Gilbert Gottfried.

Not sure if your hypothetical was meant to be a reference to the absolutely hilarious classic “Gilbert Gottfried reads 50 Shades of Gray”, but it has me wondering how much of the inherent comedy comes from “the voice” and how much comes from the idea that the man himself sat down and recorded those lines.

https://youtu.be/XkLqAlIETkA (Extremely NSFW without headphones)

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#128
post #122
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as they don’t claim the voice is the original actor (misspell the name perhaps, or the Hollywood classic ‘based on’), they won’t be impersonating no?

The Ford ad didn't say it was Midler, they just implied it by using her song with a soundalike. There was another similar case with a parody ruled as impersonation. I don't think there's good precedent for exactly where that line is drawn.

Fascinating, thanks!

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#129
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porperty is a bundle of rights, and often hard to pin down. In the case of voices, if a company owns enough of your data to train a good simulacrum, and they have the right to do it, then they kind of do own your voice -- or more precisely, a damn good substitute.

Copyright is complex. And artist's rights are outside of copyright, in some respects. An example.. in the past, painters have had their works bought, and then hung in unfavourable conditions. Or in places/locations, which reflect poorly upon the work of art. Artists have sued, and won, to have artwork moved, shown differently, or force-sold back to the artist. Now, everything you say is copyright... you. At least in…

We've seen plenty of examples of famous people suing companies for using their likeness in ads as if they are promoting a product. Tom Hanks' name is currently in the news for this.

If a company uses an actor's previously recorded dialog to be edited in a way that makes them sound in favor of terrorism on the attempt to have people think the actor said the words, we have issues on so many levels. If the dialog is chopped/re-edited to use as dialog for the same character in later works, then I really don't have issues with it.

Re: Weird A.I. Yankovic: a cursed deep dive into the world of voice cloning

#130
post #3

It's kind of wild that these tools just transfer a copy of these models every time they're spun up (whether it's to a Google Colab notebook or a local machine.) This must mean Hugging Face's bandwidth bill must be crazy, or am I missing something (maybe they have a peering agreement? heavily caching things?)

Huggingface has a strategic partnership with AWS.

1. AWS is far behind Azure and GCP in AI, so they gotta partner up to gain credibility.

2. Huggingface probably does face insane bills compared to github. But AWS can probably develop some optimizations to save bandwidth costs. There's 100% some sort of generalized differential storage method being developed for AI models.

Post reply on HN