- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
In June 2023, Paul Skye Lehrman and his partner Linnea Sage were driving near their home in New York City, listening to a podcast about the ongoing strikes in Hollywood and how artificial intelligence (AI) could affect the industry.
The episode was of interest because the couple are voice-over performers and - like many other creatives - fear that human-sounding voice generators could soon be used to replace them.
This particular podcast had a unique hook – they interviewed an AI-powered chat bot, equipped with text-to-speech software, to ask how it thought the use of AI would affect jobs in Hollywood.
But, when it spoke, it sounded just like Mr Lehrman.
That night they spent hours online, searching for clues until they came across the site of text-to-speech platform Lovo. Once there, Ms Sage said she found a copy of her voice as well.
They have now filed a lawsuit against Lovo. The firm has not yet responded to that or the BBC’s requests for comment.
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One day someone will invent a new internet with no bots, and people can be assured they are talking to a real human again. We will call it PersonNet!
Or we could go talk to our neighbors again like in the old days. Until the Boston Dynamic new Serialized Human Interface Technology robots start living 20 to a home and infiltrating neighborhoods to subvert dissidents and advertise for their corpo overlords.
Hmmm. Guess ill just live in my mind then.
Almost sounds like a sort of robotic gentrification… Hrm. Mildly concerning.
I did VO work for years. I’m out of the industry now, but I’m pretty certain that there’s no real point in getting back into it because most VO actors will be replaced soon. The voice that they gave ChatGPT with simulated emotional inflections has convinced me of that.
I would probably be a little more protected because I specialized in characters, accents and impersonations, but really, for the most part, if you aren’t already famous as an actor, you probably won’t be getting much VO work in the near future.
Oh shit, really?? Any work we’d know?
I never got any real work as a VO artist, but Lord knows I’ve worshipped those who have had some success.
In one case, in the sense that you would know those characters, yes. In the sense that you would know the work I did with them, much less likely. When I was voicing those characters, it was for flash webstoons for the skeleton of the company that was about to close up shop and just become another arm of its parent company. I don’t even think there’s an online record of most of it. I also had very early success on YouTube long before you could monetize anything, so my voice was heard there.
I’d say the other really big thing I did that people here might have heard my voice in was a PS2 game… but I don’t really want to dox myself any more than that.
but really, for the most part, if you aren’t already famous as an actor, you probably won’t be getting much VO work in the near future.
Time to start a Dungeons & Dragons podcast!
Might have worked out for him, but I think people on Lemmy are tired enough hearing from me as it is. I’d hate to inflict myself on the general public like that.
Nope. In fact I worry if you aren’t posting.
I think a lot about the fact that, on anonymous forums like this, any one of us that others have gotten to know over our time here could die and we’d never know. They’d just stop posting one day. I’m sure it’s happened to people I’ve befriended on forums over the year more than once. It makes me sad. I wish there was some good way we could let people we talked to know after the fact. I suppose tell loved ones to create accounts and make a post.
I, for one, enjoy seeing a familiar squid, even if we’ve disagreed once or twice ❤️
Thanks. Much love back. I was mostly being facetious. I have considered doing a podcast before but I honestly have no idea what I would do a podcast about or what people would want to hear from me. I also don’t really want to do it alone, but don’t have anyone to do it with.
Maybe one day…
Have you ever listened to the podcast “ologies”? It’s a woman who interviews people who are -ologists (proctologist, ornithologist, geologist, etc., as well as some non-ologist specialties that nonetheless fit the theme)
Maybe something like that would work for you :) then you aren’t stuck with a single topic, you don’t have to do it alone, and you don’t have to find one person to commit to it, it could be several. Just come up with good questions and have a semi-formal chat. It’s a very enjoyable model for learning new things you didn’t know you wanted to know about.
Thanks. It sounds fun, but it’s not really in my skillset. My skills would involve character voices and accents along with my comedy writing and improv abilities. So it would be some sort of comedy podcast. But honestly, I have been out of creative ideas for a long time.
That’s totally fair; I’m also not really capable of doing something like that consistently (even tho I would absolutely love talking to smart people - my degree is science communication, so talking to smart people to learn about things and pass them along is easily my favorite thing), so I get it.
That kinda makes me wonder if interviewing comedians would be funny… I’ve never really talked to any in person for the full impact, but some of them have that timing and wit that means any conversation can be funny. I certainly thought morning radio shows where they have guest comedians on sucked big time, but those are meant more for mass appeal, and they probably work for a lot of people or they wouldn’t have them on.
Silicon Valley and dehumanization. Name a more iconic duo. Seriously, though. Every part of the human estate that technologists touch turns to shit or gets pilfered. Throw this on the pile.
The problem is systemic IMO. The whole VC model requires the enshitification cycle to work. Any technology that should reduce human labour and be a net positive for society instead always ends up in the hands of capitalists who’ll use it to extract maximal profit.
Like, on a fundamental level, automating people’s jobs is a good thing. The problem is all the benefits are going to a very small number of people.
I’m reminded of a comment I saw once where somebody was saying how when they were young, they were told that AI would do the miserable jobs so that people would have more time to make art and poetry, while today the AI makes art and poetry so that we can work longer hours at the miserable jobs.
And the AI bros say that this is just a necessary step towards automating away the crappy jobs, but it’s not like they’ll stop automating everything else if/when AI reaches that point. The AI will still continue to automate away the hyman experience of art and culture for the rich. They’re not going to suddenly decide to implement Luxury Gay Space Communism at that point. They’ll just cram everybody into Kow Loon style ghettos.
Sorry I can’t upvote your comment any more as it’s at the maximum 111. I would add 3 exclamation marks if I could!!!
I don’t even understand how voice acting works in the intellectual property sense. How do you protect your work, or really even distinguish your work with today’s technology. You can’t use a trademark. I don’t see how it’s copyrightable. You can’t watermark it, and that probably wouldn’t help for an ai. I don’t even see how you can prove it’s yours in court.
Maybe I just don’t have a good ear for voices. I can recognize some but I could never prove that’s who it is or even suggest what would make it provable. And it seems like you could easily make trivial changes that would prevent a technical comparison.
Full disclosure, I know one of the people involved in this venture.
A different business model, it uses voice models of professional artists to replace vocal tracks. The artists helped make the models and get royalties.
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