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How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

openai.com

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Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#41

Post by thomashop »

Arisaka1 wrote: post #38
thomashop wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because assigning genders to computers makes as much sense as giving your toaster a name, it’s 2024, so why not keep the gender out of it? The why question is easily answered if you see how many negative reactions their choice of voice caused. A gender-neutral voice would have just avoided annoying a certain percentage of the population, including me. I'm happy if advertising stops hitting the sexy/cliched stereotype…

>Because assigning genders to computers makes as much sense as giving your toaster a name, it’s 2024, so why not keep the gender out of it? The goal of a tool is to be used by someone, and if the interface is the voice that the user can interact with it makes sense that it should ultimately be up to the user's preferences how the voice will sound like. I see the fact that they're aiming for gender-neutral voice as ye…

I guess I went a bit far with my comment. I don't think one needs to restrict the voices to be only gender-neutral.

But I think the default voice and your first public demos could be gender-neutral these days.

Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#42

Post by GaggiX »

thomashop wrote: post #35
GaggiX wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The why question is easily answered if you see how many negative reactions their choice of voice caused. To be honest, this HN thread was the first time I saw someone complaining about male and female voices in ChatGPT. >A gender-neutral voice would have just avoided annoying a certain percentage of the population, including me. The voice actors and actresses hired by OpenAI use their natural voices for training, I…

> To be honest, that HN thread was the first time I saw someone complaining about male and female voices in ChatGPT. It's the fifth place I've seen it since yesterday. And I haven't been looking. Even my mum sent me a Guardian article about it on Whatsapp. Daily show: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/51ucQ4s7Crc In my opinion, they should have hired a trans person, created a gender-neutral voice, and used that as the d…

>Even my mum sent me a Guardian article about it on Whatsapp.

I'm assuming you're trans and you follow or know people who seem to really care about these issues. I think you might be deeply biased, I search for the ChatGPT voice on Google and no one really seems to care about it in a negative way, if there was an actual backlash I would be able to find it easily.

>In my opinion, they should have hired a trans person, created a gender-neutral voice, and used that as the default.

I think the vast majority of the population would find it more natural to have a female or male voice. I also believe that people should be hired for their skills, not their gender.

Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#43

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

thomashop wrote: post #15
iLoveOncall wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because assigning genders to computers makes as much sense as giving your toaster a name, it’s 2024, so why not keep the gender out of it? The why question is easily answered if you see how many negative reactions their choice of voice caused. A gender-neutral voice would have just avoided annoying a certain percentage of the population, including me. I'm happy if advertising stops hitting the sexy/cliched stereotype…

My 4-year-old son didn't give our toaster a name, but he did give our robot vacuum a name. And it's just a moving gadget with some prerecorded voices.

ChatGPT, a system designed to deal with human language and answer in a way similar to a human, will surely be anthropomorphized, and many people will want it to have male or female voices.

Gender neutral should definitely exist as an option, it makes a lot of sense, but I don't see why it should be the only option.

They would have annoyed less people if the accents weren't so American and quirky. Google Maps has had a female voice since like forever and I don't remember any outrage.

Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#44

Post by thomashop »

GaggiX wrote: post #42
thomashop wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be honest, that HN thread was the first time I saw someone complaining about male and female voices in ChatGPT. It's the fifth place I've seen it since yesterday. And I haven't been looking. Even my mum sent me a Guardian article about it on Whatsapp. Daily show: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/51ucQ4s7Crc In my opinion, they should have hired a trans person, created a gender-neutral voice, and used that as the d…

>Even my mum sent me a Guardian article about it on Whatsapp. I'm assuming you're trans and you follow or know people who seem to really care about these issues. I think you might be deeply biased, I search for the ChatGPT voice on Google and no one really seems to care about it in a negative way, if there was an actual backlash I would be able to find it easily. >In my opinion, they should have hired a trans person,…

I agree that hiring should be based on skills. Creating a gender-neutral voice option in ChatGPT isn't about excluding male and female voices but promoting inclusivity. Offering a neutral voice by default helps avoid gendered stereotypes and makes technology feel more accessible and less biased.

Couldn't the fact that most ChatGPT developers are white, cis-male, and affluent introduce bias that one needs to actively work against to ensure a more inclusive and representative technology? Given historical discrimination, we need to elevate underrepresented voices to even the playing field.

Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#45

Post by Havoc »

saurik wrote: post #37

> We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents. I love how they have to go out of their way to explain that, rather than train a model on Scarlett Johansson's voice…

Pretty sure that’s another joking reference to the movie Her rather than actual concern about similarity. If that was the case pointing it out would attract lawsuits

Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#46

Post by falcor84 »

thomashop wrote: post #15
iLoveOncall wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because assigning genders to computers makes as much sense as giving your toaster a name, it’s 2024, so why not keep the gender out of it? The why question is easily answered if you see how many negative reactions their choice of voice caused. A gender-neutral voice would have just avoided annoying a certain percentage of the population, including me. I'm happy if advertising stops hitting the sexy/cliched stereotype…

> Because assigning genders to computers makes as much sense as giving your toaster a name

For whatever historical reason, the majority of Indo-European languages assign genders to nouns, so apparently it does make some sense.

Also, I'm offended on behalf of all Cylons.

Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#47

Post by Spiwux »

msoad wrote: post #3

Berlin famously casted a gender neutral voice for public transport announcements. It would be nice if OpenAI would have done that too. At least for one of the options. Computers better not have genders imo

They're clearly trying to imitate human interaction, and believe it or not, the vast majority of humans have genders they're perfectly happy with.

Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#48

Post by vlasky »

datahack wrote: post #6

Am I the only one that really dislikes these overly perky voices? And the one they used for the demo was GOD AWFUL. If this is what the future sounds like… idk. I was hoping for a calm, neutral and not eager assistant with a little class. A little Jarvis maybe? Something calm and easy on the ears. These all sounded to me like people auditioning for a role in film and television or something.

I'm surprised that you can't configure the pace or pitch of the voices. The Web Speech API, around for a long time, has that capability. I'd also love to have the option of Australian and British accents.

Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#49

Post by saurik »

Havoc wrote: post #45
saurik wrote: post #37

> We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity's distinctive voice—Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents. I love how they have to go out of their way to explain that, rather than train a model on Scarlett Johansson's voice…

Pretty sure that’s another joking reference to the movie Her rather than actual concern about similarity. If that was the case pointing it out would attract lawsuits

I mean... do you not think Sky sounds like Scarlett Johansson? I specifically use(d) that voice in no small part because of the to-me-pretty-obvious similarity.

(Note that if you select that voice today, you might not actually be using it anymore. I noticed earlier today I was shunted off to Juniper, which I didn't like as much.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40413209

Re: How the voices for ChatGPT were chosen

#50

Post by thomashop »

GaggiX wrote: post #28
msoad wrote: post #3

Berlin famously casted a gender neutral voice for public transport announcements. It would be nice if OpenAI would have done that too. At least for one of the options. Computers better not have genders imo

What is a gender neutral voice? Something that is interpolated between a male and a female voice?

https://www.ted.com/talks/nis_norgaard_how_to_create_a_gende...
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