[HN Gopher] Show HN: I had some time yesterday so I made a GPT3 ...
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Show HN: I had some time yesterday so I made a GPT3 podcast to help
you sleep
Author : stavros
Score : 189 points
Date : 2021-12-03 11:41 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (anchor.fm)
(TXT) w3m dump (anchor.fm)
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Significantly improved by doubling the speed.
| document.querySelector('audio').playbackRate = 2
| stavros wrote:
| But then how will you fall asleep?!
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| I can't think of anything worse to listen to while trying to
| sleep than robotic computer voices. Azure cognitive services has
| human voicegeneration https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
| us/services/cognitive-service...
| stavros wrote:
| That sounds more robotic to me than the WaveNet voices, though.
|
| EDIT: Actually some of the other voices are really good... I'll
| try that, thanks!
| opdahl wrote:
| Yeah I think the Christopher voice for English (United
| States) would be very nice fit for your podcast.
| stavros wrote:
| Hmm yeah, he does sound much better than the current one.
| Thanks!
| Mashimo wrote:
| Wow, that is good.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| this is so cool! is this your startup or is the code opensource ?
| would love to play around with the code.
| stavros wrote:
| Neither, it's a 30-line script I wrote yesterday. There are no
| secrets in the code, so here you go:
| https://www.pastery.net/vafgxn/
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Brilliant :) My main concern is that my brain would just wander
| off if the story is complete nonsense. I will give it a try. I've
| been listening to the same podcast episode for months now to help
| me fall a sleep.
| stavros wrote:
| I find the stories toe the line of "just enough sense" to keep
| it interesting. Episode 2 is the one I liked the most so far, I
| was reading the text with lots of interest!
| sumgame wrote:
| I don't think I could sleep to that voice though super
| interesting as as a concept.
|
| Maybe using some sort of deepfake for voice would make this a
| 100x better.
| stavros wrote:
| It is kind of hard to sleep to, I agree. This _is_ a deepfake
| voice, ie it 's generated by Google's WaveNet, which afaik is a
| deep learning thing. Unfortunately they didn't have a more
| whispered/softer voice, but I like the insanity of the
| generated stories anyway.
|
| GPT3 does tend to get a bit repetitive, though, with the
| default temperature (0.7).
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| AWS's Polly can whisper.
| viraptor wrote:
| Oh yes, infinite GPT3 ASMR sounds like something that would
| have strong fan following.
| stuaxo wrote:
| My other half would hate that, she hates whispering - is
| it possible some people have anti-ASMR?
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| ASMR is not about whispering, but about pleasant sounds
| that make you feel nice and tingly. Most people may react
| well for whispering in particular, making it very popular
| in ASMR videos, but that doesn't mean all of them do -
| others may need a different trigger.
| stavros wrote:
| Very interesting, thank you!
| max-m wrote:
| My dog fell asleep while I had episode 4 running (the end
| caught me by surprise, haha).
|
| I mean, she would have fallen asleep anyway, I probably could
| not. The voice is a little unpleasant and I concentrate too
| much on the nonsensical stories. But I also can't really fall
| asleep when the TV is running, so YMMV.
| udbhavs wrote:
| I like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wX0NRjJqg
| criddell wrote:
| Is there anything different about a podcast like this from a
| copyright perspective? Are machine generated products just as
| copyrightable as if OP had written and produced these using
| traditional methods?
| starik36 wrote:
| I would love to see a write-up or a tutorial how you made this.
| stavros wrote:
| I'll write one today!
| rexreed wrote:
| Curious to know if there's a free-tier level to use GPT-3
| stavros wrote:
| There is, plus it costs like three cents to make an
| episode.
| geokon wrote:
| Would be interested to have something like this in Chinese - to
| have playing in the background (for language learning and more
| language "exposure")
| jrootabega wrote:
| I would love to hear this kind of stuff read by actual humans. It
| would probably have a McElroys/Lumpy Gravy/Midnight Gospel feel.
| stavros wrote:
| I might try to narrate one, it'll be interesting.
| Strs2FillMyDrms wrote:
| As fascinating as this is, I would never allow myself to go to
| sleep while an AI is talking to my ear.
| stavros wrote:
| Why? Trust your robotic overlords, we are benevolent and
| completely human.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| I wouldn't fall into sleep because of intermittent bursts of
| laughter over absurdity of the stories...
| bambax wrote:
| "He chained up hundred of hungry great beetles (or is it
| Beatles?) in another room." This is gold.
| stavros wrote:
| I should post the transcripts as well, actually :P
|
| Here's that one: https://www.pastery.net/fsbjzc/
| bambax wrote:
| It's beetles!
|
| Beatles would be better. Hundreds of hungry Johns and Pauls
| chained in another room, ordered to make music.
| stavros wrote:
| The AI megabrain writes what the AI megabrain wants to
| write!
| bambax wrote:
| Can we get another story about prince John and princess
| Yoko?
| stavros wrote:
| Ask and you shall receive!
|
| https://anchor.fm/deepdreams/episodes/Episode-5-e1b6trr
|
| With a new voice, as well!
| bambax wrote:
| Thank you! ;-))
| stavros wrote:
| Goddamn, this episode is dark. I should have vetted it
| more while generating.
| bambax wrote:
| "The AI megabrain writes what the AI megabrain wants to
| write!"
| stavros wrote:
| One does not censor the AI megabrain.
| w-m wrote:
| Maybe the archangel of cynicism can come back in a future
| episode. I'd like to know what they are up to.
| stavros wrote:
| I really hope he does too.
| [deleted]
| junon wrote:
| Cool idea but that voice is like sandpaper to my ears.
|
| Maybe a female voice, a bit quieter (the soundscapes are almost
| completely silent for me) and maybe add some high-room-size, long
| decay (5-10, maybe even 20 seconds), wide panned (like 100%) and
| moderately diffused (maybe 10-20%) reverb to the voice with like
| 30% mix or so, which would add a very airy tone and help the
| voice blend in a bit. If the TTS engine has a whisper setting
| (many do), add just a bit. It'll help thicken the reverb.
|
| That, paired with bass-heavy soundscapes, will create a very nice
| balance between the low registers and the voice's high registers.
|
| Just a thought. :)
| stavros wrote:
| This is great feedback, thanks! Maybe I should open-source the
| code.
|
| Actually, fuck it:
|
| https://gitlab.com/stavros/deep-dreams
|
| I'll implement your suggestions (or as many as I can), thanks!
| junon wrote:
| No problem! Also if you're into the music production end of
| it, check out adaptiverb. I use it extensively when I make
| ambient stuff and it is unparalleled for quality.
| stavros wrote:
| Oh huh, that looks very interesting, thanks! I imagine it's
| a VST plugin, I'll have to check it out next time I'm near
| a DAW.
| stavros wrote:
| Hey, would you by any change be able to generate another
| background track for me? The one I have is 10' long so it
| won't be enough if the story is longer, and I don't know
| how to make these.
| junon wrote:
| I don't have tons of extra time these days for music,
| unfortunately. I give you permission to rip/download
| anything from here that you'd like and include it in the
| project, however: https://soundcloud.com/0-aces
| stavros wrote:
| Even better, thank you!
| bambax wrote:
| Just found this comment. I'm a bit into generative /
| algorithmic music; here are two demos I made a year ago:
| https://fligenstein.bandcamp.com/
|
| One is just piano, the other is keys and drums. On
| Bandcamp they are about 10' each, but they can be made of
| arbitrary length, without ever repeating themselves
| exactly (in principle... in practice it's likely there
| are exact repeats but they should be few and far
| between).
|
| If you have an idea of the type of background music you
| need, I can make other tracks too. I'd be happy to work
| with you on this.
| stavros wrote:
| That'd be great! I guess the best would be something with
| very smooth changes, like the current background track. I
| made that one on mynoise.net.
| bambax wrote:
| Ok, I'll try to come up with a couple ideas tonight or
| this weekend.
| trutannus wrote:
| There's also a few TTS systems which are pretty natural
| sounding too. Maybe one of those if they wanted to make a
| subscription for this, that way they could offset the price of
| the TTS service
| jamesfmilne wrote:
| Charlie Brooker eat your heart out. This is pretty terrifying. I
| agree, no way I'd allow anyone to fall asleep listening to this.
| :D
|
| It is also pretty cool though.
|
| Reminds me a bit of Blue Jam:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8VG6HUimsQ
| mansoor_ wrote:
| Soothing voice....?
| stavros wrote:
| The new voice is much better.
| k__ wrote:
| Pretty awesome!
|
| Idea: Grammarly could make the phrasing sound a tiny bit more
| human.
| stavros wrote:
| And thus worse!
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| Interesting concept. Two suggestions:
|
| 1- Don't host on anchor. Podcasting is an open standard. Don't
| let companies (like Spotify or Apple) take it over. Check
| https://podcastindex.org/
|
| 2- The voice is too mechanical for this to be actually reasonable
| to listen to at night, potentially could be listenable with AWS
| Polly Neural voices, it's pretty good.
| mekkie wrote:
| I actually think the voice is pretty good for sleeping, feels
| very droney. but the nonsensicalness of the stories made it
| harder to sleep because my brain was trying to figure out what
| was going on
| kevincox wrote:
| I don't see the problem here. It has an RSS feed so you can
| easily use an podcatcher you want
| https://anchor.fm/s/7735d924/podcast/rss
|
| Really the main concern I would say is that the author doesn't
| own the domain so they are locked in, but I don't see how this
| affects listeners.
| stavros wrote:
| I didn't much love hosting on Anchor/Spotify, but I made this
| in half an hour and I didn't want to have to get into RSS/site
| generation. Do you know of an easy way to dump audio files and
| some metadata somewhere and get a Podcast with RSS? I can
| upload there as well.
|
| I'll try Polly, thanks! The current voice annoys me too.
| leodriesch wrote:
| You could use Transistor [0].
|
| [0]: https://transistor.fm/
| pqdbr wrote:
| You seriously made all this in half an hour?
| JshWright wrote:
| I've worked with Stavros a lot over the past decade. Half
| an hour is totally plausible...
| stavros wrote:
| By the power of glue code, I manifest products.
| malshe wrote:
| I didn't check OP's username so your comment made me
| wonder what an amazing technology platform is Stavros!
| JshWright wrote:
| I have wondered the same thing myself in the past.
| ayewo wrote:
| Off-topic: Speaking of the OP's username, it seems he
| originally used to go by StavrosK [1] on HN for several
| years, right?
|
| I initially didn't recognize the username because it was
| all-lowercase, so I'm curious why the rename from
| StavrosK to stavros?
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=stavrosk
| stavros wrote:
| Well, it might have taken 45'. It's all auto-generated, it
| was really quick.
|
| I wrote a script later to automate the audio mixing, that
| took another hour. Now I can generate a ready-to-upload
| episode with one command, though.
| bambax wrote:
| I think most people here would be interested in a write-
| up.
| stavros wrote:
| Oh, good idea. I'll do that!
| mtlynch wrote:
| The main problem is giving out the anchor.fm domain for your
| RSS feed, as it marries you to Anchor forever. In theory, you
| can get anchor to 301 redirect your subscribers somewhere
| else, but I've found that podcast clients tend to keep the
| old URL.
|
| You can use Anchor to generate your RSS feed and host your
| content while still sharing the RSS URL on a domain you own.
| So you'd give out a URL like feeds.deepdreams.com/rss, and it
| would proxy the response from Anchor's RSS feed
|
| I wrote a simple Go cloud function that can proxy your Anchor
| RSS URL for you:
|
| https://github.com/mtlynch/rss-proxy
| stavros wrote:
| I ended up setting GitLab pages to just curl the XML feed
| every time I publish, so now it's at
| https://deepdreams.stavros.io/feed.xml. Thanks for the
| help!
| mtlynch wrote:
| Nice! Glad it was helpful.
|
| It's one of those things that's hard to do after you've
| got a bunch of subscribers, so I'm always glad if I can
| warn people early in their podcast against getting stuck
| with their host.
| stavros wrote:
| Oh definitely agreed, I aim to always own my stuff, but
| this was so quick and dirty that I figured it doesn't
| matter enough. Still, since it was this easy to do,
| better safe than sorry!
| gumby wrote:
| BTW you might want to ask dang to change the link in the
| submission too!
| stavros wrote:
| The link should be okay, I don't have another website,
| just the feed is hosted elsewhere (and it's linked in the
| target page).
| keyb0ardninja wrote:
| Just listened to one of the episodes. Sounds decent. I
| personally think it would sound a lot better if you
| slowed down the speed a little bit. 0.75x sounded much
| better to me.
| stavros wrote:
| It depends on which one you heard, there are 3 different
| voices there.
| stavros wrote:
| Hm, yeah, I should at least whip up something like that.
| Getting the domain is easy, I just don't want to have to
| set up another static site or service just to proxy a
| file... Maybe I should bite the bullet and set up GitLab
| pages plus a simple script to output an RSS feed.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| Polly supports ssml tags for nuanced vocal inflection and
| emphasis. Gpt-3 could probably output high quality tags if
| you run your content back through with an ssml prompt.
| stavros wrote:
| Hmm, I'll try that, thank you! Very interesting idea.
| steve918273 wrote:
| GitHub pages might work for you.
|
| E.g., https://github.com/wiobyrne/infusing-computing-pod
| stavros wrote:
| Hmm, the static site will take a bit of setting up, but
| I'll look into it. Thank you.
| quiffledwerg wrote:
| Googles neural voices are much better than any of Amazon's.
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| i don't think so
| daneel_w wrote:
| Agreed. I recently built an internal application allowing our
| customer reps to play around with ideas using text-to-speech
| before sending the "copy" to a studio for a professional
| human recording, and included both Google WaveNet and Amazon
| Polly in the available voice synthesis choices. Polly is in
| its own right plain and simply mediocre for the most part,
| and _in comparison_ to WaveNet it 's just awful.
| stavros wrote:
| I ended up really liking the Azure voices, and switched to
| one of those.
| TriNetra wrote:
| I've tried both of them and even Microsoft Neural speech and
| IBM's ones; eventually, Microsoft one has sounded me the most
| clear and natural amongst these four services.
| yosito wrote:
| AWS Polly looks interesting! I wish it supported some more
| languages, for personal reasons. Maybe I'll try to set
| something up that reads ebooks, tweets, or news articles to me
| with this.
|
| Do you know if there are any similar quality TTS tools for less
| technical applications? I mean, where you can just type in the
| text you want and get an audio file with a high quality voice?
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Might not get what you mean by "just"
|
| There are free websites like this: https://ttsreader.com/
|
| But TTS is built into browsers as well eg (this it would need
| some code not much) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/SpeechSynth...
|
| I use AWS Polly to read HN in the mornings
| asxd wrote:
| The voice of the latest podcast sounds _much_ nicer. It 's a
| fairly convincing nonsense podcast.
| stavros wrote:
| I'm glad you think so, I think so too! Now I just need to
| make them (much) longer.
| tejohnso wrote:
| Supposed to be nonsense stories, but after two minutes of
| listening, I don't find it nonsensical at all. Sounds like
| something perfectly reasonable written by a seven to ten year old
| child.
| gala8y wrote:
| These fairy tales are quite hypnotic for me due to weirdness of
| AI generated grammar and plot. They reminded me of a beautiful
| fairy tale Richard Bandler wrote. It is a fable written
| intentionally using hypnotic language techniques (part of Neuro
| Linguistic Programming set of patterns) and a nice read.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/364664.The_Adventures_of...
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I think several people have commented on how GPT produces
| narratives with a dream-like quality, locally sensical but less
| and less so the more you zoom out. I've since found that
| catching myself thinking nonsensical thoughts is a sure sign
| I'll soon be asleep. Seems like without high level attention,
| we do almost exactly what GPT does.
| [deleted]
| xer0x wrote:
| This is way to amazing & funny to be helpful for sleeping!
| vletal wrote:
| I love the idea, yet... The latest episode 7 is about a girl
| thinking about killing a witch, kicking her in a face, her
| hitting her back, and stuff.
|
| Definitely did not help me fall a sleep.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, it's getting a bit dark these days.
| vletal wrote:
| Brothers Grims would definitely agree with that sentiment.
| lloeki wrote:
| ... then suddenly there is a Prime Minister of Everything,
| which had me burst in laughter.
|
| Also at the beginning there seemed to be one little girl
| (Amelia) and one witch (Sarah), and then there were now two
| little girls (plus the witch), and one of the little girls
| stood between the two little girls, and later on there
| appeared to be three little girls. The girl duplicating over
| and over sure got me hooked, kind of like watching a strange
| surreal painting, or reading some PKD short story.
| tunesmith wrote:
| But it's okay, because they have a shared love of watermelon,
| and then got a job with the prime minister? I think?
| miniatureape wrote:
| I want this, but instead of fairy tales I want the sounds of a
| really boring, never-ending baseball game without ads.
| episode0x01 wrote:
| Actually nice to have in the background. Reminds me of a
| (sometimes poorly) translated book of Russian fairy tales my dad
| gave to me as a kid
| stavros wrote:
| Haha, that's actually the vibe I was going for, thanks!
| flashfaffe2 wrote:
| This sounds very cool. Out of curiosity, if anyone how to such
| stuff... interested to learn it
| stavros wrote:
| I'll write something up soon!
| Samin100 wrote:
| Here's a similar demo I worked on that lets you generate a
| podcast from a text description:
| https://twitter.com/sharifshameem/status/1380145070624542722...
|
| The GPT-3 generated conversations were coherent most of the time,
| and even interesting! However the generated speech via Google
| Cloud's API was monotonous and could do with a bit more
| intonation and excitement.
| stavros wrote:
| That looks great! What did you use for the voices? And did you
| win the martial arts tournament?
| divs1210 wrote:
| That's pretty neat!
|
| It's kinda spooky too - listening to the thoughts of an AI!
|
| (I know that's a stretch, but still)
| albert_e wrote:
| Cool. Is this open source?
| stavros wrote:
| It is now! https://gitlab.com/stavros/deep-dreams
| mdaniel wrote:
| Pedantically, it is "source available":
| https://gitlab.com/stavros/deep-dreams/-/blob/master/LICENSE
|
| But I still appreciate you posting it, because it's
| fascinating to see how such a thing was done!
| stavros wrote:
| It's now AGPL 3, you PEDANT
| quiffledwerg wrote:
| Podcast are available on podcast platforms.
|
| I don't have Spotify or anchor.
| stavros wrote:
| You didn't even click, did you? You just wanted to complain.
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| A podcast is at-the-very-least a rss feed where items have a
| media enclosure element pointing to something for a pod-
| catcher to download [1].
|
| If something else allows you to listen to episodic content
| via a player and does not satisfy this condition then it is
| factually wrong to call it a podcast. Do you think a TV show
| released weekly on Netflix is also a podcast?
|
| You can't listen to what you have made without having a
| spotify account (or clicking directly on the webpage), ergo
| it's not a podcast.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_enclosure
| viraptor wrote:
| If only there was such a link on that page... Like Spotify,
| but maybe for "more platforms". If only... :-P
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| Not sure if you're being serious, but there isn't as far
| as i can see.
| viraptor wrote:
| On the linked page there's:
| https://anchor.fm/s/7735d924/podcast/rss
|
| It's also in the "more platforms" section right next to
| "Spotify".
| quiffledwerg wrote:
| Anchor Spotify rss I have none of those. I have Apple
| podcasts.
| viraptor wrote:
| https://medium.com/@joshmuccio/how-to-manually-add-a-rss-
| fee...
| stavros wrote:
| https://anchor.fm/s/7735d924/podcast/rss
| quiffledwerg wrote:
| How would I have known if I didn't click?
|
| Did I want to complain? No, I wanted to listen to it.
| stuaxo wrote:
| I like the way it has generated a fairytale.
| camillomiller wrote:
| >>once upon a time there were three princesses who were brothers
|
| I would never sleep with this, I would laugh too much! I love
| absurdist AI stories
| sparky_ wrote:
| Weirdest one yet:
|
| >> So he chained her up in her room and he chained up hundreds
| of angry wolves in the other side of the room. [...] But he
| made the window and the doors big enough so that the fierce
| beasts could move in and out and chase her away. And they lived
| happily ever after.
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| This is really cool from an engineering perspective, but there
| was a sort of uncanny valley vibe that makes me fear for the
| psychological health of someone listening to this all night.
| anonymoushn wrote:
| Did you find it easy to get GPT3 API access in some time
| yesterday?
| stavros wrote:
| I already had access to it for a few months but didn't do
| anything with it (until yesterday).
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