12 ms·
David Attenborough is now narrating my life
- hyperific 3y agoThis is nuts. I want a version of this where Emma Thompson narrates my life like Stranger than Fiction.
- iris2004 3y agoIt's a neat demo. I don't know how I feed about cloning the voice of a living person, even a 'public' figure like a presenter. I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually becomes illegal, although it'll likely be as difficult to enforce as normal casual copyright infringement.
- woleium 3y agoI expect the existing laws will be extended. I had a colleague tell me about looking into how much Morgan freeman wanted for a 15s commercial ($$$$$$). The alternative he used was a “sound alike” voice actor, for which Morgan Freeman received royalties to the tune of $$$$$.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoWhy would Morgan Freeman be entitled to royalties for a commercial where the voice over sounded similar to his voice... unless he actually sold the rights to represent him with a vocal likeness in the commercial (AKA he didn't do the voice over, but the commercial was able to claim the voice over was by Morgan Freemen, or that it represented Morgan Freeman's opinions... like when a book by a celebrity is actually written by someone else)
- frereubu 3y agoI don't get this either, and would be very interested in a clear explanation.
- galangalalgol 3y agoyeah at least in the US you are fine as long as you don't claim the voice is a certain person.
- 3np 3y agoGathering, retaining, using individual voice recordings for business purposes may be regulated, though. Already is in places, even if enforcement and precedence is lacking. So there'd be no legal way to produce or share the model generating such a voice or its output.
- kevinmchugh 3y agoYou can't use a Tom Waits (or Morgan Freeman) sound-a-like because you're profiting off their work and likeness. Unless the celeb sells a licensed sound-a-like. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/when-tom-waits-sued-doritos/ https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/when-tom-waits-sued-doritos/
- chankstein38 3y agoWhat if my voice sounded like Tom Waits or Morgan Freeman and I did commercials? It doesn't and I don't I'm just curious how this makes sense. Is it just if the voice is advertised to sound like him?
- stuckinhell 3y agoYes you would owe them money. This why I'm against artists trying to chokehold the AI.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoI don't think with the current copyright system you would owe another artist money when recording a commercial just because your voice happens to sound like theirs. But with AI perhaps it's "fair" (given the assumption that there's any fairness to copyright in the first place) to expect a creator to provide some kind of compensation to the source material that their AI was trained on. Case in point, this bot was clearly trained on David Attenborough samples, perhaps it can't be used commercially without purchasing some rights to the man's likeness.
- ciabattabread 3y ago> The alternative he used was a “sound alike” voice actor, for which Morgan Freeman received royalties to the tune of $$$$$. Was it Josh Robert Thompson, who is officially authorized? [1] [1] https://filmschoolrejects.com/morgan-freeman-crab-in-barb-and-star-go-to-vista-del-mar/ https://filmschoolrejects.com/morgan-freeman-crab-in-barb-an...
- WalterBright 3y agoI'd pay to stop hearing Morgan Freeman's voiceovers everywhere. It's way overplayed. At least do some James Earl Jones!
- antod 3y agoMy father had a friend who was a well recognised commercial voice over artist , and told me about his fees. There was a fee for doing the actual work, but a much bigger exclusivity/exposure fee designed to prevent his voice getting over used to the point where future work dried up.
- MrDresden 3y agoWhile I agree, I also did thoroughly enjoy a recent Youtube channel that did Warhammer 40K lore in Attenborough's voice. It recently got taken down for obvious reasons. Makes you wonder if in a few years there will be licenses available for using someone's voice for such endeavours.
- kkzz99 3y agoI have been creating audiobooks from ebooks for a while now. I just grab an .epub and turn it into a pretty good audiobook in minutes for completely free using local models.
- Tagbert 3y agoWhat do you use for the voice and the text to speech generator?
- Dig1t 3y agoYes please do share the models you are using
- thrwy_918 3y agoWhat's the state of the art in run-it-yourself TTS? I haven't seen anything that even comes close to what ElevenLabs is doing
- sigmar 3y agoI converted a book to audiobook a couple of months ago using the tts code here: https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS Wasn't as good as eleven labs, but it had enough options that I found a voice that I liked to listen to.
- CamperBob2 3y agoShouldn't be illegal, but I could understand it if we see laws that require explicit disclosure when voices of living people are simulated. At first glance that seems like the right compromise.
- anon_cow1111 3y agoThe extremely obvious legal problem is, ALL simulated voices sound like some real person somewhere, it's just a matter of finding that person. I don't see a solution to this, so I'll tend to believe the cynic's viewpoint that the final written law will be in favor of whoever has the most lawyers.
- fragmede 3y agoSure. The difference is some voices, like David Attenborough or Samuel Jackson are instantly recognizable to a large audience while someone who isn't famous' voice is not. Where to put the bar is a specific issue, but the exemplars in their category stand out as recognizable.
- jstarfish 3y ago> I don't see a solution to this It's actually simple. Take David Attenborough's name out of the picture. "A generic British guy is now narrating my life" isn't as funny as implicating a known celebrity, which is where the legal issues would arise. A generic British guy isn't going to sue you. Hell, you might even be able to get away with "A generic British guy who sounds like David Attenborough is now narrating my life."
- thrwy_918 3y ago>ALL simulated voices sound like some real person somewhere By the same logic, all simulated faces look like some real person somewhere, but I wouldn't expect to simulate a face that looks like Brad Pitt and then use it in a TV commercial
- jojobas 3y agoIf human vocal impersonation is legal (and they are damn convincing at times) so should be machine.
- olalonde 3y agoPersonally, I don't really see a problem with it as long as it's not used deceptively. In this case, it's pretty clear that it's not really David Attenborough speaking. Outside of that, I am not sure I'm seeing a moral or economic argument for making voice copyrightable. The usual argument about incentivizing creation doesn't apply here.
- tantalor 3y ago> pretty clear that it's not really David Attenborough speaking Not sure how you came to that conclusion. The bot mimics his speaking style very precisely.
- harpiaharpyja 3y agoI'm pretty sure he came to that conclusion using context.
- olalonde 3y agoIndeed.
- olalonde 3y agoFrom the tweet and video where he explains how he did it...
- RunSet 3y ago> I don't know how I feed about cloning the voice of a living person, I would like to hear it generate Kevin Conroy (R.I.P.) vocals for Christopher Nolan's Batman movies.
- samplatt 3y agoCloning the voice of a dead person, to me, feels even icky-er. Indigenous Australians would probably feel the same, too, considering they avoid contact with pictures or recordings of deceased people.
- thefourthchime 3y agoI've also cloned his voice, it's trivial. That said, it'll be interesting how the legal side of this shakes out. Does one own their likeness and voice? Who decides what that is? There are plenty of voice actors that can do a great Morgan Freedman or trump. How is that different?
- tptacek 3y agoThis is simultaneously impressive and pretty gross.
- i_am_jl 3y agoDo we have a word for this yet? I feel like it's becoming common enough that we'll soon need one.
- devindotcom 3y agogenerative impersonation, I suppose
- AlecSchueler 3y agoBut for something simultaneously impressive and gross?
- civilitty 3y agoRepugnificent.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pawelduda 3y agoImgrossive
- 3y ago
- xwdv 3y agoIt’s exciting to imagine that we can soon enter the age where people will be able to voice their opinions in their own voice and choice of words, long after they are dead and gone from this physical world. Perhaps the first version of some digital afterlife.
- isoprophlex 3y agoI too long to retain some corporeal presence as a box, filled with an llm trained on my life's collected texts and utterances. A featureless grey cube with only two buttons marked "more snark" and "more grossness", to be dusted off and interacted at every christmas by my great-grandchildren.
- metabagel 3y agoAnd a robotic finger to pull.
- thallium205 3y agoThis comment will be added to your LLM.
- midasuni 3y agoAnd of course anyone can use your voice ti voice any opinion. Want Ghandi saying his words are backed with nuclear weapons? Want to portray Hitler as a nice loving chap? And that’s before you get onto current politicians - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/10/faked-audio-sadiq-khan-armistice-day-shared-among-far-right https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/10/faked-audio...
- Dioxide2119 3y agoHm. Gives a bit of truth to the Amish claim that having themselves be photographed steals a bit of their soul. Your voice is (was) unique to you. Recordings moved the needle to your voice (when saying new phrases) is unique to you. These voice cloning of the last few years means that your voice (as long as it is never recorded and remixed) is unique to you. A far more difficult proposition.
- Dig1t 3y agoThis is astounding. This is the kind of demo that we could only dream of just five years ago, now some hacker dude on Twitter can just throw this kind of thing together. Seriously cool.
- itissid 3y agoOh man what a time to be alive. The creativity is amazing. Bravo.
- smlacy 3y agohttps://nitter.net/charliebholtz/status/1724815159590293764 https://nitter.net/charliebholtz/status/1724815159590293764
- atleastoptimal 3y agoI tried making something like this but OpenAI restricts Vision API calls to 100 per day rn
- kadomony 3y agoGiven the Attenborough Lore channel for Warhammer received a cease and desist, you can bet that his legal team will be busy suing the shit out of people like this.
- hyggetrold 3y agoI was so bummed about that. It makes sense of course but those videos were really fun.
- DaiPlusPlus 3y agoWas it noncommercial and done in the spirit of satire (surrealism?) - in which case surely they'd get a pass - but I guess they just didn't want to go bankrupt trying to defend themselves? It's a shame then - when you compare it to the situation between the nerdcore gangsta-rapper alter-ego of Stephen Hawking: MC Hawking; who was created without authorization by Dr. Hawking, and sold real physical CDs for a profit (and I own one!), but who ultimately received an endorsement from the late physicist who took it all in good humour - and arguably Stephen Hawking is a bigger public figure than David Attenborough. ...if it really does comes down to just the personal approval by the subject themselves (and not their legal/marketing/legal teams acting without them even being aware) then I'm concerned what it means for artistic liberty vs public figures.
- kadomony 3y agoI don't believe it was intended to be satirical. The depth of worldbuilding and lore in Warhammer affords an immense opportunity for Games Workshop to actually do some kind of series like what was created with Attenborough's likeness. His voice is his main source of income for his estate nowadays, so it makes sense he doesn't want it replicated, especially without any permission being granted.
- throwaway4aday 3y agoToo bad they'd never do that and would probably do a worse job if they did. There should be carve outs for fans to make things that bloated corporations will never have the ingenuity to come up with or the balls to carry out.
- rcarmo 3y agoI want this, but with Werner Herzog. It would be the only way to do justice to the existential angst that pervades some of my meetings.
- slothtrop 3y agoThere's AI generated word-salad debate between Herzog and Zizek https://infiniteconversation.com/ https://infiniteconversation.com/
- pacifika 3y agoFlagged by Safari for an invalid cert
- justin_oaks 3y agoShould happen on any browser. Try https://www.infiniteconversation.com/ https://www.infiniteconversation.com/ instead.
- willseth 3y agoCame here to say this. This is correct.
- willcipriano 3y agoMike Rowe would be good for doing work around the house.
- zestyping 3y agoI just did this. I couldn't resist. I looked into the camera and Werner said: > In the quiet chaos of an ordinary room, a lone figure peers into the abyss of a lens, a silent sentinel in the company of walls adorned with fragments of a life well-lived. The ambient light casts a celestial glow atop their crown, an unintentional halo in a moment of serendipity. The gaze, piercing yet calm, confronts the onlooker, challenging the nature of existence through the simple act of capturing a fleeting second in the digital ether. Here stands a human, enshrined in the mundane yet extraordinary tableau of their own making.
- SpaceManNabs 3y agoI think this is nasty to provide as a service to others because the voice didn't consent. I don't agree with others when also critiquing personal use. Personal use should be fair use as long as you aren't stealing or mining a service to minimize some personal cost. So is this a text to speech model while mimicking somebody's voice? That is pretty cool. One thing I don't understand is how you get specific models for someone's voice. Do you fine tune to that voice? The issue of style transfer is not something I understand for audio. Anyone have example papers to read? I am familiar with MuLan, MusicLM, and MusicGen.
- spyder 3y agoIn the tweet he says he is using https://elevenlabs.io https://elevenlabs.io for the voice, which is currently the best quality text-to-speech service and allows for voice cloning too. And Elevenlabs is saying this about cloning other people's voices: Can I clone anybody's voice? Yes, as long as you have their consent. For Professional Voice Cloning, we have integrated robust security measures to make sure you can only clone your own voice. Unless you share it, your voice belongs and is available only to you. But it looks like it's not enforced if the example in the tweet is possible. But even if it would be enforced by the company, open-source models are getting close to them and they are harder to control. The public or commercial use of the output from these models can (and probably should) be limited by laws, but if the users want to use it privately (for example to narrate themselves) there is not much you can do to prevent it especially with the progress in this tech it will become more trivial to do it for anybody.
- leobg 3y agoIt actually is enforced. They have a verification system where they show you random text on the screen and you have to read that into the microphone. So I don’t know how the tweet author got around that.
- chmod775 3y ago> I don’t know how the tweet author got around that. If I had to defeat such a thing, I'd try to fake the voice using a good-enough AI running locally. Alternatively use some voice-changer/editing magic to make your own voice sound "good enough".
- BlueTemplar 3y agoReminded me of the South Park guys (et al.) take on Deep Fakes from a few years ago, especialy the bit with Michael Caine : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM (Of course they used a real fake voice for all of them.)
- expertentipp 3y agoDid Trump marry his daughter? I'm out of touch with American politics.
- 93po 3y agoYes and then he peed the bed and slapped Nancy pelosi’s ass
- VikingCoder 3y agoI think you shouldn't be able to distribute code / model like this without permission... ...but... What if you distributed code that when I ran it, and plugged in each of the Blue Planet / Planet Earth DVDs, it would learn how to do this, with a local model?
- zhynn 3y agoyeah... you can't unring this bell.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nextworddev 3y agoWonder how he’s deciding which frame to feed to judge.py, given it would be tremendously wasteful to call gpt4vision on every frame. Maybe there’s some logic to detect meaningful drifts?
- AussieWog93 3y agoIn the video, it just captured a frame every 5s. You can see the way he holds up his cup of water for a little too long to make sure it gets captured.
- circuit10 3y agoLooks like it just does it every 5 seconds
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoTake my money
- divbzero 3y agoYouTube is developing revenue sharing for AI-generated music [1]. I wonder if they will extend revenue sharing to non-musical content like the narration in OP. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/21/23840026/youtube-ai-music-copyright-monetization-universal https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/21/23840026/youtube-ai-music...
- LightBug1 3y agoInteresting ... and awful ... it sharpens how I feel about it knowing that the man is nearing the end of his life. This is absolutely not how I want to experience and remember the man.
- dang 3y agoRelated: https://github.com/cbh123/narrator https://github.com/cbh123/narrator
- floatrock 3y agoIsn't part of the actors' strike about maintaining rights on AI-reproductions of actor likeliness? This is a brilliant and effective demo of why that's important.
- gumballindie 3y agoI am starting to believe a lot of people working in ai are sociopaths. Their fixation with impersonating people and stealing ip points firmly in that direction.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- OnlyMortal 3y ago“… and here we have the common Twitter poster. Their attempt to gain favour with their peers and, therefore, popularity with potential mates falls foul once again.” - Attenborough maybe.
- oldshatterhand 3y agoI need Werner Herzog to narrate my life! "Look in the eyez of this nerd. The intenzity of the ztupidity looking at back at you is juzt amazing."
- gumballindie 3y agoWithout consent, of course.
- spiderice 3y agoYou don't need consent to create parodies, which this clearly is.
- wsintra2022 3y agoPretty cool, a couple of months back a friend asked me if I could get him a Carl Rogers audiobook, I forget which one. I told him sure and jokingly asked if he wanted David Attenborough reading it. He said yes. I had myself a challenge. Long story short, I was able to create an audio book for a friend, the voice was meh!
- consumer451 3y agoI have really enjoyed the new show Scavengers Reign. It does an amazing job of showing an alien planet's biodiversity. I have fantasized about a cut of just the nature scenes with Attenborough narrating. It seems like this make an attempt at that.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoThis is the future I was promised.