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It's fun but as I tested it I realized how this is pretty much the modern equivalent of a Facebook quiz that asks you the name of your first pet, first car and
by belval 2y ago
It's fun but as I tested it I realized how this is pretty much the modern equivalent of a Facebook quiz that asks you the name of your first pet, first car and mother's maiden name.
If they recorded any of that they likely have enough to clone my voice somewhat faithfully.
Congratulations on labelling my French Canadian accent as French though, I'll have to work on my pronounciation more to fool the AI.
- interloxia 2y agoIt would be nice if they were clear they wouldn't keep the sample on the page. They do have a privacy policy on their main site www.boldvoice.com/privacy It didn't guess for me other than to say I was a native speaker.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoFrench Canadian and France French accents are very different, so if the AI couldn't tell the difference, that doesn't speak well for it
- belval 2y agoDoes it regionalize at all? There are a few comments about Portugal Portuguese vs Brazil Portuguese so I think it only tries to find your first language, not actually pinpoint the underlying accent.
- cchance 2y agoYa it doesn't seem to go down into dialect, its the broad scope, it nailed my wifes spanish accent even though i really can't hear it at all and she talks very american
- cperciva 2y agoIndeed. I learned Quebecois in school and when I started speaking it in Paris I got confused looks and "... do you speak English?"
- jszymborski 2y agoI have a similar experience, but my impression is that Parisians have little patience for accents in general. People elsewhere in France where I've visited (Aix-en-provence, Lyon, Toulouse) had no trouble chatting with me. Also want to note that I am not passing judgement, I am sure I might become a bit brusque with tourists if Montreal had the same volume.
- tasty_freeze 2y agoMy wife was a French major in college and spent a year in Aix in the mid 80s. She didn't really enjoy the experience -- although her grammar and vocab were fine, she had enough of an accent that people treated her as an outsider. On the way out of the country she stopped in Paris for a few days to take it in. She went into some shop and the proprietor asked my wife if she needed help. My wife replied asked about some clothes. The proprietor insulted my wife over her southern accent -- French southern, not US southern, and it made my wife's day. Someone in France finally thought she was french.
- jszymborski 2y agoThanks, that's a great story.
- sam_lowry_ 2y agoOne of the tests for native / non-native speakers aside from the famous colored words quiz for spies is how well they understand accents. While my own French is pretty decent, I can barely understand Quebecois. OTOH, native French speakers get along with Quebecois just fine.
- idatum 2y agoJust want to say "Thank you!" for sharing your instinct for privacy concerns. That also made me pause to click on Try Me on the site. Hard pass.
- jondwillis 2y agoIt was the no privacy policy for me.
- anadalakra 2y agoBoldVoice.com/privacy
- wildpeaks 2y agoA privacy policy wouldn't stop a bad actor, just like a robots.txt wouldn't prevent scraping.
- benreesman 2y agoThat’s all we need: FarmVille but trickier.
- gtirloni 2y agoHow does this website know who you are?
- gleenn 2y agoDid you know that something like 80% of the websites you visit are tracked by a handful of companies which are all effectively sharing that with many thousands of ad and data broker companies which can easily narrow you down? It's not tinfoil hat land to knkw that nearly every site you visit has cross-site tracking.
- hsuduebc2 2y agoWell yea but as far as I know these companies know your identity but the website only know you as a number shown in statistics. So if this thing isn't a trap from big tech you are fine.
- anadalakra 2y agoHi, founder here! We're a YC-funded education app with over 1 million downloads, currently #7 on the Education chart of the App Store. The goal of the accent oracle tool is to help more non-native English speakers find out about BoldVoice. While it's important as consumers to be aware of data privacy with AI tools in general, I want to set the record straight that that's not the point of what we're doing here. But great to hear that we got your accent right :)
- sam_lowry_ 2y agoI tried the app, and it's great. As a near-native French speaker I would be interested in working out my French pronunciation, hopefully you will go multi-language soon.
- anadalakra 2y agoThanks for checking it out! We're 100% in on English for now, but some day!
- belval 2y agoHey! Just to be clear I really didn't want to imply that you were trying to clone my voice. I think your product is very interesting and this demo is a nice showcase of your tech. It was meant more as a reflection on how, due to how fast threat models evolve, even the seemingly innocuous act of recording 2 sentences on a random website can now be used to break into my bank account.
- anadalakra 2y agoGotcha, totally fair to be discerning with your data these days.