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Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

#51

Post by 9x39 »

13415 wrote: post #8
barbazoo wrote: post #5

> Greene felt the male voice sounded just like him Turns out he still has his own voice, that one sounds like him.

That's likely the case because they deliberately cloned his voice.

Doesn't seem like a very good clone. I wonder if he's hoping he's in their training data for a payout, if he can force that to be disclosed.

I think a few random samples trivially shows NotebookLM is higher pitched, although if you generalize to "deep male voice with vocal fry" you could lump them together with half the radio and podcast voices.

Re: Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

#52

Post by altcunn »

parpfish wrote: post #37
kelseyfrog wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we not sample indefinitely from the latent space of vocal and delivery characteristics?

the "latent space containing all voices" may give you the ability to parametrize voices and make an infinite number of unique voices. BUT... people have a limited ability to distinguish points in that space. in perceptual psychology/psychophysics, there's the concept of the "just-noticeable difference" (JND) which is the smallest change to a stimulus you can make that is reliable detectable. normally the JND is measu…

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Re: Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

#53

Post by alvah »

csallen wrote: post #45
disposition2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably an unpopular opinion on this forum where everyone is considering can something be done vs should something be done, but it sounds like theft to me. But I am also very anti-AI in the artistic space, because if it weren’t for humans freely providing so much artistic content, we wouldn’t have this outcome. And I believe the only end result will be less humans openly sharing knowledge, because some heavily money…

It's not theft, it's copying. Two different words, with two different meanings, and different legality, for very good reason. You can only steal things that can be taken away, which is why theft is bad, because it deprives the original owner of something they once had. Copying does not directly deprive anyone of anything. In fact it just adds more value to the world, and makes it more available to more people. Nobody…

That is the best explanation I have seen yet of the difference. I'm definitely stealing it...

Re: Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

#54

Post by sailfast »

crazygringo wrote: post #38
tantalor wrote: post #25

Compare for yourself. David Greene: https://youtu.be/xYxQrLp4MQk NotebookLM: https://youtu.be/AR4dRtzFvxM I think he just has "podcast guy" voice. It's pretty generic.

Yup, it's absolutely not his voice. The NotebookLM voice is pitched significantly higher. Nor does it seem like his voice but changed "just enough" (like in pitch). I agree, he just has a very generic-sounding "podcast guy" voice. And obviously, NotebookLM trained on tons of podcasts and is generating a highly generic, average-sounding voice. Which is why it's pitched higher, since David Greene has a lower than avera…

You never know, it might be worth a couple hundred grand in settlement money…

Re: Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

#55

Post by georgemcbay »

ghaff wrote: post #42
dehrmann wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of sport announcers sound the same. There might just be classes of voices where you expect a faceless voice in some scenario to sound a certain way.

In general, without any context, I doubt there are a lot of people you'd immediately recognize by their voice. When I was podcasting (and editing) there were certainly some people I would recognize but in general not so much.

> I doubt there are a lot of people you'd immediately recognize by their voice.

There is a lot of variability on this from person to person.

A lot of people are terrible at recognizing voices out of context. I have always been able to recognize people's voices just about as easily as their faces.

(Unfortunately, while this is a neat parlor trick, I haven't found it to be a particularly valuable skill).

Re: Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

#56

Post by irishcoffee »

tbossanova wrote: post #49
tantalor wrote: post #25

Compare for yourself. David Greene: https://youtu.be/xYxQrLp4MQk NotebookLM: https://youtu.be/AR4dRtzFvxM I think he just has "podcast guy" voice. It's pretty generic.

Congratulations. I hate both of them. Maybe I’m old but the podcast style of “there might be some interesting information here, but let me tease it for ages with a voice that makes you think something interesting is about to happen…” No sir, I don’t like it

This is the same reason I’ve watched about 4 hours of YouTube since it launched. Almost all car-repair videos.

Re: Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

#58

Post by spyder »

tantalor wrote: post #25

Compare for yourself. David Greene: https://youtu.be/xYxQrLp4MQk NotebookLM: https://youtu.be/AR4dRtzFvxM I think he just has "podcast guy" voice. It's pretty generic.

It sounds similar, but doesn't sound the same to me. Also how would you determine the similarity allowed? Maybe if we would have such a measure they could use that in voice model training to not allow that much similarity to a single voice, but if we don't have an agreed upon value for that than it's a subjective "sounds the same to me" rule then it's hard to follow that. Ok, they can say that don't train on their voice, but it's very likely that a blend of voices from an "allowed" set could produce a very similar voice to his.

Re: Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

#59

Post by anigbrowl »

irishcoffee wrote: post #56
tbossanova wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations. I hate both of them. Maybe I’m old but the podcast style of “there might be some interesting information here, but let me tease it for ages with a voice that makes you think something interesting is about to happen…” No sir, I don’t like it

This is the same reason I’ve watched about 4 hours of YouTube since it launched. Almost all car-repair videos.

I watch a lot of synthesizer videos, and over the years an wholly organic 'no talking' genre has emerged for just this reason. Some people do reviews via subtitles.

Re: Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

#60

Post by jader201 »

tantalor wrote: post #25

Compare for yourself. David Greene: https://youtu.be/xYxQrLp4MQk NotebookLM: https://youtu.be/AR4dRtzFvxM I think he just has "podcast guy" voice. It's pretty generic.

Yeah, this shouldn’t even be on HN, or Washington Post for that matter.

There are going to be countless people that think AI is using their voice. Humans share remarkably similar voices, but obviously you can’t copy that (other than impersonations, obviously).

Unless there is evidence that a company intentionally went after a specific human voice to train their AI, there’s no reason to report on these people claiming AI is using their voice.

Maybe if it’s someone with a very distinctive voice. But this guy, as the OP said, just has a “generic podcast guy” voice.

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