4 ms·

Tom Waits has a 1 in a billion voice. I'm fairly confident most people couldn't pick Scarlett Johansson's voice out of a lineup of 10 random 35 year old female

Tom Waits has a 1 in a billion voice. I'm fairly confident most people couldn't pick Scarlett Johansson's voice out of a lineup of 10 random 35 year old female professional voice actors.

crazygringo 2y ago
You'd be wrong. We're almost as good at recognizing voices as we are at recognizing faces. Recently I had a friend message me to ask me if it was me asking a question at a recorded event with audience questions that they were watching on YouTube (the camera only showed the stage, not audience members at the microphones). They had absolutely no reason to think I would have been at that particular event. And I told them, yup -- it was me asking that question a few years ago. And there is nothing particularly distinctive about my voice. If anything, my voice is probably particularly generic. But it's just timbre, accent, and the unique "fingerprint" of my particular vocal personality.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  I don't think I would be. How many hours has your friend heard you talk? How many hours has the average person heard Scarlett talk? Coupled with the fact that Scarlett is acting when people generally hear her voice, which means some aspects of her vocal qualities change(black widow doesn't sound exactly like her character from Her)
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    It has nothing to do with hours of exposure. You don't need time to learn someone's voice, in the same way you don't need time to recognize their face. And obviously we're talking about "normal" voices as opposed to impressions or accents. But we still recognize voices even if the voice is doing a wide range of emotions. The same way we don't stop recognizing someone's face when they change from a smile to a frown.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      Recognizing someone has everything to do with hours of exposure. Which is why people are better at picking their mother out of a crowd rather than a random person who they were shown a picture of once. I'm beginning to wonder if you've ever considered your interactions with other people, or if you're just making this up as you go along.
      - crazygringo 2y ago
        No, you're talking about something different. We certainly have memory, and can forget people, like a random person we were once shown a picture of. And pictures are not 3D faces either. But if you meet someone for half an hour and then run into them later that day, you recognize them just as easily as you do your mother. There's zero doubt that they are the person you met earlier (unless you have face blindness or something). You don't have to meet them for 10 more hours to be able to recognize them instantly. Sure you might forget them a year later but that has nothing to do with your recognition capabilities, but with memory.
        IncreasePosts 2y ago
        Ok, and how often does an average person hear Scarlett's voice that they would recognize her voice when they hear a random voice? This isn't a situation where someone hears a Scarlett voice sample, and then compares it to Sky. This is, someone has heard Scarlett randomly in movies over the past 20 years and then recognizes Scarlett as Sky. Which, given the fact that the voice actor for Sky has put out a statement stating that her voice has never been compared to Scarlett's in real life, makes me think that people are just hallucinating that Sky sounds like Scarlett. For what it is worth, I listened to them side by side(before OpenAI put out a statement by the voice actor) and they are not the same voice.
arduanika 2y ago
Yeah. I imagine her case against OpenAI would be much stronger if she had spent decades on a strict diet of whiskey, candy, and gravel. (Not legal advice.)

Tom Waits has a 1 in a billion voice. I'm fairly confident most people couldn't pick Scarlett Johansson's voice out of a lineup of 10 random 35 year old female professional voice actors.

crazygringo 2y ago

You'd be wrong. We're almost as good at recognizing voices as we are at recognizing faces. Recently I had a friend message me to ask me if it was me asking a question at a recorded event with audience questions that they were watching on YouTube (the camera only showed the stage, not audience members at the microphones). They had absolutely no reason to think I would have been at that particular event. And I told them, yup -- it was me asking that question a few years ago. And there is nothing particularly distinctive about my voice. If anything, my voice is probably particularly generic. But it's just timbre, accent, and the unique "fingerprint" of my particular vocal personality.

IncreasePosts 2y ago
I don't think I would be. How many hours has your friend heard you talk? How many hours has the average person heard Scarlett talk? Coupled with the fact that Scarlett is acting when people generally hear her voice, which means some aspects of her vocal qualities change(black widow doesn't sound exactly like her character from Her)
- crazygringo 2y ago
  It has nothing to do with hours of exposure. You don't need time to learn someone's voice, in the same way you don't need time to recognize their face. And obviously we're talking about "normal" voices as opposed to impressions or accents. But we still recognize voices even if the voice is doing a wide range of emotions. The same way we don't stop recognizing someone's face when they change from a smile to a frown.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Recognizing someone has everything to do with hours of exposure. Which is why people are better at picking their mother out of a crowd rather than a random person who they were shown a picture of once. I'm beginning to wonder if you've ever considered your interactions with other people, or if you're just making this up as you go along.
    - crazygringo 2y ago
      No, you're talking about something different. We certainly have memory, and can forget people, like a random person we were once shown a picture of. And pictures are not 3D faces either. But if you meet someone for half an hour and then run into them later that day, you recognize them just as easily as you do your mother. There's zero doubt that they are the person you met earlier (unless you have face blindness or something). You don't have to meet them for 10 more hours to be able to recognize them instantly. Sure you might forget them a year later but that has nothing to do with your recognition capabilities, but with memory.
      - IncreasePosts 2y ago
        Ok, and how often does an average person hear Scarlett's voice that they would recognize her voice when they hear a random voice? This isn't a situation where someone hears a Scarlett voice sample, and then compares it to Sky. This is, someone has heard Scarlett randomly in movies over the past 20 years and then recognizes Scarlett as Sky. Which, given the fact that the voice actor for Sky has put out a statement stating that her voice has never been compared to Scarlett's in real life, makes me think that people are just hallucinating that Sky sounds like Scarlett. For what it is worth, I listened to them side by side(before OpenAI put out a statement by the voice actor) and they are not the same voice.

arduanika 2y ago

Yeah. I imagine her case against OpenAI would be much stronger if she had spent decades on a strict diet of whiskey, candy, and gravel. (Not legal advice.)