151–160 of 255 posts
Might be because our brains try to 'feel' the speaker, the emotion, the pauses, the invisible smile, etc.
No doubt models will improve and will be harder to identify as AI generated, but for now, as with diffusion images, I still notice it and react by just moving on..
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Just like printing presses killed the profession of copying books by hand, eliminating the training pathway for illuminated manuscripts. Death of civilization itself I say, damn those printing presses.
Given that the printing press was the root cause for the century of religious wars that soaked Europe with blood, and was key in the revolutions that overthrown absolute monarchies all over Europe, I don't think it's as good as an example as you think it is. Death of a civilization doesn't mean disappearance of mankind or even overall regression on the long term.
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You don't choose to spend your time reading books. You probably roll your eyes when someone tells you they don't have time for some activity you deem valuable. This is the 'no time to exercise' debate in a different shape. They are also different activities, with audio it's easier to listen to more but retention is usually lower. Not casting any elitist "you need to read" bullshit by the way, but find it odd to defin…
> You probably roll your eyes when someone tells you they don't have time for some activity you deem valuable. There's a few categories where it makes sense to roll your eyes, like if they say they have no time to shower or have never been to one of their kid's baseball games. But for things that aren't basic human expectations, I think you'd have to a real jerk to roll your eyes at someone not having time. No time t…
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Just like printing presses killed the profession of copying books by hand, eliminating the training pathway for illuminated manuscripts. Death of civilization itself I say, damn those printing presses.
If you see podcasts as useless in modern society as illuminated manuscripts, no big loss I suppose, but I do enjoy the human made ones and would be sad to see them go extinct as the manuscripts did. And the same thing is happening to other entry-level creative roles, some of which you may personally regret the loss of too.
There's a lot more to be said for the value of audio books, but the accessibility gains of proliferated auto-generated audiobooks outweigh the downside of losing a small number of expertly produced audio books.
For context, I listen to audio books a lot, and for years I have listened to traditional TTS readings of books too. Better voice generation for books without audiobooks is a great win for society.
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Given that the printing press was the root cause for the century of religious wars that soaked Europe with blood, and was key in the revolutions that overthrown absolute monarchies all over Europe, I don't think it's as good as an example as you think it is. Death of a civilization doesn't mean disappearance of mankind or even overall regression on the long term.
Do you have a source for that? I don't think the printing press was the cause of religious wars any more than bullets were the cause of WWII
On the one hand, this is very convenient. Probably cool for some non-fiction. On the other, some of my favorite audio books all stood out because the narrator was interpreting the text really well, for example by changing the pacing during chaotic moments. Or those audiobooks with multiple narrators and different voices for each character. Not to mention that sometimes the only cue you get for who's speaking during d…
> On the other, some of my favorite audio books all stood out because the narrator was interpreting the text really well This (and everything else with AI) isn't saying "you don't need good actors any more". It's saying "if you don't have an audiobook, you can make a mediocre one automatically". AI (text, images, videos, whatever) doesn't replace the top end, it replaces the entire bottom-to-middle end.
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Just like printing presses killed the profession of copying books by hand, eliminating the training pathway for illuminated manuscripts. Death of civilization itself I say, damn those printing presses.
There's a big difference. Printing presses produce superior products. A mediocre audiobook is certainly better than no audiobook at all, but it is an inferior product to a well produced audiobook.
Even current SOTA models would almost certainly be able to handle multiple speakers and pick-up on the intended tone and intonation.
Don't make the mistake of thinking what we have today is what we will still be working with in 5 or 10 years.
Can anyone recommend an open source option that would allow training on a custom voice (my own, so I'd be able to record as many snippets as it needed to train on) to allow me to use it for TTS generation without sharing it off my machine? Edit: I'll wait to see if any recommendations get made here, if not I might give this one a go: https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS
Not directly related to the software, but interestingly on the authors website there is a Schedule a free call with me ( https://claudio.uk/templates/call.html ). I wonder if randos on the internet ever do that, and how it works out.