7 ms·

That little stinger at the end was not as surprising as they thought it was :P It's very cool tech, but it's far from transparent. It has a very obvious "autot

That little stinger at the end was not as surprising as they thought it was :P It's very cool tech, but it's far from transparent. It has a very obvious "autotune" like sound to it that jumps right out. when they edited that one word it was obvious it had been edited. Again, super cool tech, just not going to replace voice actors or anything.

Kiro 3y ago
What stinger at the end?
- az226 3y ago
  Not releasing code or weights under the false pretense of misuse.
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    No, they are referring to the end of the video, where they have a “surprise twist” that the video narration was autogenerated and not a real person.
    - az226 3y ago
      I mean that wasn’t even slightly non-obvious.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    False? The misuse opportunities are obvious.
    - az226 3y ago
      Reproducing the code is a matter of time, and short at that.
emehex 3y ago
I agree with you that v1 isn't a suitable replacement... right now. But what v2? v3?
- graypegg 3y ago
  I don’t think GP is saying it won’t improve. The thread is about the current state of it that meta wrote this article on.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
twelfthnight 3y ago
SPOILER ALERT :p Its more surprising nowadays if an article about AI doesn't have a "twist" that what you read/heard/saw was AI.
pixl97 3y ago
For me its more like I wake up and check if humans have been replaced yet. Oh good, it's another day that I don't have to share one time pads with my mother to ensure that I'm talking to her and not a simulant performing fraud on a massive scale.
- chrislikescode 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bloqs 3y ago
    [flagged]
- ignoramous 3y ago
  Cryptographic proof of personhood is going to be a thing, is it not? Outside of BigTech, Signal is as poised as WorldCoin to be just that.
  - waboremo 3y ago
    Yes and it's going to be done through digital IDs. Unless something dramatic happens, we're poised to turn to digital IDs linked to your real ID and in turn validating access to apps/communication.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      And authoritarians everywhere will rejoice (and they will give out the means to duplicate these IDs to a select few in case they need to generate evidence that 'you' have offended the state).
      - kybernetikos 3y ago
        The only sensible approach to this problem (assuming it is a real problem) is trusted individuals certifying others as human. There are alternatives to using the state for this, but they are difficult and fraught with UX issues. Perhaps a decentralised web of trust or some sort of blockchain based registrar of trust that can trace trust routes between mutually distrusting individuals. Unless such a system is in place, international and strong before states start playing in this space, there isn't much chance of beating a state's approach to the problem. Just look at https certificates. The current system involves browsers shipping configured to trust a whole bunch of entities I don't really trust, and there has been relatively little interest in trying to build a working decentralised approach to site security.
ethbr0 3y ago
For video narration elocution, I'd say it was most of the way there. When. Narrating. Videos. One. Tends. To. Speak. Differently. Or, the more important case -- if I'm listening to audio-version-of-X, is it sufficiently human-like that I can forget that it's synthesized voice? To me, yes. Easy to tell if you're specifically listening for it, but to use an analogy one doesn't typically read novels and parse closely for grammar, does one? Your attention is elsewhere, on the content and plot.
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> It has a very obvious "autotune" To me it has a very obvious "Hindi is my native language" accent. I mean after literally the first sentence: "The research team at Meta is excited to share our work...". Ouch. The "our work": just ouch. I was wondering why it wasn't a native english speaker presenting the video when the video is precisely about generating speech. The first seven seconds are particularly bad. Don't get me wrong: I've got a lovely french accent when I speak english. This has either been trained on too many audiobooks spoken by non-natives or they've used their own tech, where the "reference audio" given as input was from a non-native. In any case something is seriously off. At 1:59, the "Hi guys, thanks you for tuning in! Today we are going to show you..."... That is obviously an Hindi speaker speaking (it's an example of fixing a real voice by removing background sounds). I think that the main voice of the video was done by the same person who did the example at 1:59. And I think that they used their example of using a "reference audio". And that person ain't a native english speaker. To compare: when the reference audio uses a proper english accent (the example with the "diverse ecosystem" at 0:52), then the output from the text-to-speech sounds native. I think they just fucked the demo video and it may already be ready for prime time.
- kybernetikos 3y ago
  Maybe they deliberately chose an accent that wasn't native English to demonstrate the style transfer capability. I think the ability of the system to output accented voices is a strength not a weakness, so long as it can do other accents too.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  The accent was obvious enough that I wonder if they might have not been trying to hide it at all? Maybe they just happened to pick somebody from the team with a very mild accent.
- alach11 3y ago
  I'm surprised you had such a negative reaction to the Hindi accent! To me, it was no more difficult to understand than my colleagues who speak English as a second language. To me, this is a style choice for the demo. Not evidence that they "fucked" it up. Accents are common - everyone has one! It's nice to see the model can support your personal voice even if it's not completely neutral English.

Kiro 3y ago

What stinger at the end?

az226 3y ago
Not releasing code or weights under the false pretense of misuse.
- JimDabell 3y ago
  No, they are referring to the end of the video, where they have a “surprise twist” that the video narration was autogenerated and not a real person.
  - az226 3y ago
    I mean that wasn’t even slightly non-obvious.
- flangola7 3y ago
  False? The misuse opportunities are obvious.
  - az226 3y ago
    Reproducing the code is a matter of time, and short at that.

emehex 3y ago

I agree with you that v1 isn't a suitable replacement... right now. But what v2? v3?

graypegg 3y ago
I don’t think GP is saying it won’t improve. The thread is about the current state of it that meta wrote this article on.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

twelfthnight 3y ago

SPOILER ALERT :p Its more surprising nowadays if an article about AI doesn't have a "twist" that what you read/heard/saw was AI.

pixl97 3y ago

For me its more like I wake up and check if humans have been replaced yet. Oh good, it's another day that I don't have to share one time pads with my mother to ensure that I'm talking to her and not a simulant performing fraud on a massive scale.

chrislikescode 3y ago
[flagged]
- bloqs 3y ago
  [flagged]
ignoramous 3y ago
Cryptographic proof of personhood is going to be a thing, is it not? Outside of BigTech, Signal is as poised as WorldCoin to be just that.
- waboremo 3y ago
  Yes and it's going to be done through digital IDs. Unless something dramatic happens, we're poised to turn to digital IDs linked to your real ID and in turn validating access to apps/communication.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    And authoritarians everywhere will rejoice (and they will give out the means to duplicate these IDs to a select few in case they need to generate evidence that 'you' have offended the state).
    - kybernetikos 3y ago
      The only sensible approach to this problem (assuming it is a real problem) is trusted individuals certifying others as human. There are alternatives to using the state for this, but they are difficult and fraught with UX issues. Perhaps a decentralised web of trust or some sort of blockchain based registrar of trust that can trace trust routes between mutually distrusting individuals. Unless such a system is in place, international and strong before states start playing in this space, there isn't much chance of beating a state's approach to the problem. Just look at https certificates. The current system involves browsers shipping configured to trust a whole bunch of entities I don't really trust, and there has been relatively little interest in trying to build a working decentralised approach to site security.

ethbr0 3y ago

For video narration elocution, I'd say it was most of the way there. When. Narrating. Videos. One. Tends. To. Speak. Differently. Or, the more important case -- if I'm listening to audio-version-of-X, is it sufficiently human-like that I can forget that it's synthesized voice? To me, yes. Easy to tell if you're specifically listening for it, but to use an analogy one doesn't typically read novels and parse closely for grammar, does one? Your attention is elsewhere, on the content and plot.

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> It has a very obvious "autotune" To me it has a very obvious "Hindi is my native language" accent. I mean after literally the first sentence: "The research team at Meta is excited to share our work...". Ouch. The "our work": just ouch. I was wondering why it wasn't a native english speaker presenting the video when the video is precisely about generating speech. The first seven seconds are particularly bad. Don't get me wrong: I've got a lovely french accent when I speak english. This has either been trained on too many audiobooks spoken by non-natives or they've used their own tech, where the "reference audio" given as input was from a non-native. In any case something is seriously off. At 1:59, the "Hi guys, thanks you for tuning in! Today we are going to show you..."... That is obviously an Hindi speaker speaking (it's an example of fixing a real voice by removing background sounds). I think that the main voice of the video was done by the same person who did the example at 1:59. And I think that they used their example of using a "reference audio". And that person ain't a native english speaker. To compare: when the reference audio uses a proper english accent (the example with the "diverse ecosystem" at 0:52), then the output from the text-to-speech sounds native. I think they just fucked the demo video and it may already be ready for prime time.

kybernetikos 3y ago
Maybe they deliberately chose an accent that wasn't native English to demonstrate the style transfer capability. I think the ability of the system to output accented voices is a strength not a weakness, so long as it can do other accents too.
bee_rider 3y ago
The accent was obvious enough that I wonder if they might have not been trying to hide it at all? Maybe they just happened to pick somebody from the team with a very mild accent.
alach11 3y ago
I'm surprised you had such a negative reaction to the Hindi accent! To me, it was no more difficult to understand than my colleagues who speak English as a second language. To me, this is a style choice for the demo. Not evidence that they "fucked" it up. Accents are common - everyone has one! It's nice to see the model can support your personal voice even if it's not completely neutral English.