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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

#71

Post by crazygringo »

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 don't think I have a particularly distinctive voice. But I once asked a question at a Q&A with a famous actor, the whole event went up on YouTube, but only the stage was on-camera, not the people in the Q&A line. Three years later, a friend of mine messages me "WAS THAT YOU asking a question about x to actor y at event z?" She'd randomly come across it on YouTube. Yup, it was. Blew me away.

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

#72

Post by Physkal »

hluska wrote: post #68
mhuffman wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yup, it's absolutely not his voice. However it does seem to copy the the way he "lisps" his S's. I am not sure that is common 'generic-sounding "podcast guy" voice'.

When I was university, I got heavy into spoken word poetry and making hip hop. Personal Journals by Sage Francis had become a huge part of my life and rather than focus on school like a mature person I thought I’d make my own album. It turns out I have a profound lack of talent, but I got a lot of experience with a microphone. To me that ‘s’ sound reminds me of the sibilance a Shure SM58 picks up without a pop filter…

Drop us some heat

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

#73

Post by godelski »

rectang wrote: post #66
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 doesn't matter if the voice is a perfect facsimile — it only matters whether a court can be persuaded that the result is derivative. As the article notes, the AI doesn't even have to be trained on Greene's voice for him to have a case. > Grimmelmann said Greene doesn’t necessarily have to show definitively that Google trained NotebookLM on his voice to have a case, or even that the voice is 100 percent identical t…

In other words, can you guess who someone is impersonating even if their impersonation isn't a perfect simulation?

There's a lot of characteristics to people's voices. Tons of people impersonate Trump purely through cadence. Same with Obama. How many singers impersonate Tom Waits?

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

#74

Post by shermantanktop »

apparent wrote: post #61
amelius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably it's what his voice sounds like to himself. Maybe he should listen to his own podcasts more.

I thought about this. IIRC a person's voice sounds deeper in his own head because it reverberates in his skull. if anything, this would make David think the NotebookLM voice sound less like his (since his is already deeper, to begin with). But it's possible that a professional radio host is aware of this effect and adjusts for it when deciding if something sounds like him. Maybe he over-adjusts and thinks this is wha…

The real question is how high his voice gets when talking to his pets…

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

#78

Post by reactordev »

jader201 wrote: post #60
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…

You absolutely can copy that, it’s called voice cloning and you can do it on as little as a few seconds of audio. Once cloned, you can generate audio with that voice, saying whatever you want it to.

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

#79

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

mhuffman wrote: post #67
crazygringo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Yup, it's absolutely not his voice. However it does seem to copy the the way he "lisps" his S's. I am not sure that is common 'generic-sounding "podcast guy" voice'.

I'm glad this comment was here, it was the first thing I latched on to that seemed very specific to this person (or at least uncommon amongst general "podcast guys").

In particular, check out the pronunciation of the trailing S is the word "this" at 28 seconds in the clip of Davide Greene compared to 24 seconds in the Notebook LM clip. Really seemed uncannily similar to me.

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

#80

Post by jader201 »

reactordev wrote: post #78
jader201 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You absolutely can copy that, it’s called voice cloning and you can do it on as little as a few seconds of audio. Once cloned, you can generate audio with that voice, saying whatever you want it to.

To be clear, I mean someone can’t file a lawsuit against someone else for sounding like them.

Of course you can have an AI target someone else’s voice. My point is that unless there is evidence it was intentional, it’s silly to claim that just because it sounds similar to a human’s voice, that means it must’ve been intentional.

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