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Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

lyrebird.ai

271–280 of 311 posts

Re: Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

#271

Finally, I can have Morgan Freeman narrate my major life events. Update: Reading changelogs before deployment never sounded better!

As a skilled vocal impersonator I read all my comments aloud in the voice of Morgan Freeman before posting them. Ordinary sentiments such as 'these pickles are quite tasty' are suddenly transformed into profound insights on the human condition.

Re: Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

#272
This is very exciting to me because it lets RPGs provide spoken dialog for everything (I'm waiting to see if they can do emotions at all convincingly). Even big budget games suffer from "you can call your character anything as long as it's 'Shepherd'" simply because you can't mention the character's name or any other use-content safely.

Re: Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

#273
post #19

It's there any copyright protections for a person's voice? If not, David Attenborough and Morgan Freeman will be lead voice actors in my next game project

It's not copyright, but a 'right of publicity.' It's an interesting area of law, although I don't feel like doing a write-up right now. Basically you can't use a celebrity's likeness to imply endorsement; otherwise you'd see a lot more advertising with cartoon versions of famous people. This technology won't affect courts very much as it's just another kind of likeness.

Re: Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, when the sad day comes and he passes away I'd be very comforted to hear his voice on new nature documentaries. I just can't watch them unless he's narrating.

I agree. This leads to an interesting question: can the estate of a deceased person sell or license their voice rights for new future performances? I suspect the law has some catching up to do.

This is not qualitatively different from existing situations, and will be only a minor legal wrinkle. Estates have been licensing the likeness of dead people for commercial purposes for a good while, now those likenesses are simply more sophisticated.

I'll tell you what will get complicated, copyright holders complaining that their product was used as input for the training algorithm and demanding a slice of any profits because they made the famous individual more famous by casting them.

Re: Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

#276
post #258

Curious choice to name a company & product with a name that sounds like "Liar Bird" when spoken. To me, that looks like they're fully embracing the concept that this can be used for nefarious purposes. If one of their goals is to bring attention that this technology exists and can be misused, the name reinforces that.

I guess they've named it that because the lyrebird is an amazing impersonator. The end of this BBC clip blew my mind the first time I saw it. https://youtu.be/VjE0Kdfos4Y

But you may have a point, and the ethics section makes it clear that they are indeed very aware of that this may be misused.

Re: Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I missed that one, and it's the best I heard so far. Bit of noise in the background, but the voice itself is very believable. I can imagine in year or two the radio and TV will start using this tech instead of actual speakers. Also, translation and synchronization of any content will be so much cheaper.

Try listening to the NOAA weather radio. They've been using very good TTS for years.

Do we know what they're using? I found a few references to AT&T Natural Voices.

Re: Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

#278
post #205
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "potentially suspicious" History is now doomed. Crackly recordings are obviously fakeable. Children will listen to JFK's "We shall not go to the moon" speech, proof that the moon landings are a liberal conspiracy and all that grainy footage is just CGI with a noise filter.

This idea hit me harder than I expected -- I am reminded of the scene in Interstellar, where the main character's daughter's teacher asserts that we never went to the moon. I don't recall whether she genuinely didn't believe it, or whether she felt it was better to lie to the kids to keep them motivated in the present, but apparently we are getting much closer to having gatekeepers of knowledge be able to actively su…

> I don't recall whether she genuinely didn't believe it, or whether she felt it was better to lie to the kids to keep them motivated in the present

She stated it as a simple fact and seemed to believe it. There wasn't any indication that she might think it was a fact of what one might call "political convenience". It made the scene just that much chilling to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpKUBHz6MB4

Re: Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try listening to the NOAA weather radio. They've been using very good TTS for years.

Do we know what they're using? I found a few references to AT&T Natural Voices.

According to Wikipedia, "In 2002, the National Weather Service contracted with Siemens Information and Communication and SpeechWorks to introduce improved, more natural voices. The Voice Improvement Plan (VIP) was implemented, involving a separate computer processor linked into CRS that fed digitized sound files to the broadcast suite.... Additional upgrades in 2003 produced an improved male voice nicknamed "Tom", which could change intonation based on the urgency of a product"

Also, here are some audio clips http://www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/info/newvoice.html

Re: Lyrebird – An API to copy the voice of anyone

#280
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah that's kinda scary. What could we do to determine if a video is legitimate or not?

Mainly, practice critical thinking. Don't take anything at face value until it has been reconfirmed from many sources. At least that's what I do.

I love critical thinking as much as the next person, but I always find statements like this to be smug and self-congratulatory cliches. Of course you take things at face value, we all do. Every waking hour we're getting new information and having to make sense of it, while still living our lives. It's not practical for anyone to pretend that every interaction can be rigorously confirmed and independently verified, which means proliferation of convenient, effective mechanisms for lying and deception should be of real concern to all of us. No one is such a great critical thinker that they're immune, and it's particularly dangerous when our few reliable avenues of verifying identity and provenance are about to be cut off.
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