[HN Gopher] David Attenborough is now narrating my life
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David Attenborough is now narrating my life
Author : andygcook
Score : 236 points
Date : 2023-11-15 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| iris2004 wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Why 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 wrote:
| I don't get this either, and would be very interested in a
| clear explanation.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| yeah at least in the US you are fine as long as you don't
| claim the voice is a certain person.
| 3np wrote:
| Gathering, 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 wrote:
| You 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/
| chankstein38 wrote:
| What 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 wrote:
| Yes you would owe them money. This why I'm against
| artists trying to chokehold the AI.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I 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.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Picasso is widely quoted as having said that "good
| artists borrow, great artists steal."
| https://lifehacker.com/an-artist-explains-what-great-
| artists...
| lbwtaylor wrote:
| There is a significant difference between "stealing"
| artistic ideas, and impersonating individual humans.
|
| How folks can think it's reasonable to impersonate Morgan
| Freeman and use his voice to sell, for example, crypto
| crap. It's gross and should absolutely be illegal.
| cjaybo wrote:
| Well Picasso wasn't much of a legislator, and I don't
| think his point was that all artistic theft is
| justifiable to begin with.
| mywacaday wrote:
| What would happen if a voic was trained on Morgan
| Freeman, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, George Clooney
| and tuned to not sound like any one individual but have
| the characteristics we find appealing. Could that be used
| for its own copyright claim?
| tim333 wrote:
| I guess you wouls have the chance to argue about it in
| court, if someone came after you.
| pavon wrote:
| In that case though (and the Bette Milder precedent), the
| sound-a-like was used with a song that the artist was
| associated with, which implied that it was the actual
| artist, or at least deliberately invoked their likeness
| in mind of the viewer.
|
| I'm skeptical that using a narrator that happened to
| sound like David Attenborough or Morgan Freeman would be
| enough by itself to qualify for right of publicity unless
| it included obvious references to prior work, catch
| phases, or the like.
| notahacker wrote:
| Difficult to find a Morgan Freeman sound-a-like if
| they're not marketing themselves as a Morgan Freeman
| sound-a-like. And if they are (and obtaining more
| customers as a result), it's easier to pay Morgan Freeman
| royalties than come up with persuasive arguments that
| selling 'voiceovers that sound like Morgan Freeman' isn't
| profiting from deliberately invoking his likeness...
| amelius wrote:
| > Difficult to find a Morgan Freeman sound-a-like if
| they're not marketing themselves as a Morgan Freeman
| sound-a-like.
|
| How about this scenario: they publish a youtube video,
| then someone says in the comments: hey you sound just
| like morgan freeman, then the company looking for the
| voice performance googles for morgan freeman, finds the
| comment and contacts them.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| So then in court the google for Morgan Freeman and the
| comment you sound like Morgan Freeman come out and then
| you owe Morgan Freeman $$$$$$$$$ because he had to go to
| court over it.
| mym1990 wrote:
| What happens if the sound alike is given away for free
| and there is no profit or even revenue component?
| ge96 wrote:
| Huh, Salma Hayek was right
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| If your voice is the twin of a celebrity's, but you don't
| benefit from the likeness (for example, not being paid
| for voice acting where your identities could be
| confused), you'd probably have a strong defense if the
| celebrity tries to extort royalties from you.
|
| The rest is shades of grey. For example, if you're an
| incredible voice imitator and plan to do shows,
| negotiations would be wise. Even Weird Al asked for
| permission when he didn't had to, legally speaking.
| aequitas wrote:
| > Even Weird Al asked for permission when he didn't had
| to, legally speaking.
|
| But Weird Al does parodies, which is fair use. He's not
| trying to pass off an album as being a genuine Michael
| Jackson album or something.
| morelisp wrote:
| Why would Weird Al try to pass off his albums as being
| from the guy who stole his songs?
| vasco wrote:
| Right of Publicity: https://higgslaw.com/celebrities-sue-
| over-unauthorized-use-o...
| airstrike wrote:
| if my product doesn't imply or state that the voice is
| Morgan Freeman's, I don't think they really have a case?
| at least not based on common sense
| justinpombrio wrote:
| If the voice was chosen specifically to sound like Morgan
| Freeman, for the purpose of making listeners think it's
| Morgan Freeman when they hear it, it seems reasonable for
| it to run afoul of Morgan Freeman's right to publicity.
| airstrike wrote:
| I owe nothing to Morgan Freeman just because I sound like
| him, unless I'm intentionally misleading listeners by
| advertising his name or implying as much
| ewi_ wrote:
| If they can reasonably argue that you're being hired
| because you sound like Morgan Freeman and you wouldn't
| get the job otherwise, then they likely have a case.
| bradley13 wrote:
| Tell that to Einstein's family. Put an older guy with a
| German accent and wild white hair in a commercial, and they
| want paid.
|
| Honestly, it's offensive that they can "own" a general
| appearance. But their lawyers manage to enforce it.
| avar wrote:
| An easy workaround for this is to dress your German
| speaker in a Nazi uniform, now suddenly nobody wants to.
| be associated with them, even if you keep the unkempt
| white hair.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| > 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-an...
| MrDresden wrote:
| While 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| What do you use for the voice and the text to speech
| generator?
| Dig1t wrote:
| Yes please do share the models you are using
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Shouldn'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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Sure. 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 wrote:
| > 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."
| jojobas wrote:
| If human vocal impersonation is legal (and they are damn
| convincing at times) so should be machine.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is simultaneously impressive and pretty gross.
| i_am_jl wrote:
| Do we have a word for this yet? I feel like it's becoming
| common enough that we'll soon need one.
| devindotcom wrote:
| generative impersonation, I suppose
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| But for something simultaneously impressive and gross?
| rzzzt wrote:
| grimpressive? improsse?
| civilitty wrote:
| Repugnificent.
| pawelduda wrote:
| Imgrossive
| jl6 wrote:
| CreePT
| shmeeed wrote:
| Uncanny vallAI
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Why do you think it is gross? Also, what does gross mean in
| this context? It's a very ambiguous term. Would it be less
| gross if this was a meme video where someone does an impression
| of Attenborough and just narrates what the person being filmed
| is doing in a comical way, there are a million of those
| probably.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| You sound like a robot, devoid of understanding the most
| obvious human traits and feelings.
| xwdv wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| And a robotic finger to pull.
| thallium205 wrote:
| This comment will be added to your LLM.
| midasuni wrote:
| And 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...
| Dioxide2119 wrote:
| Hm. 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I sincerely find this to fall into the proscriptions
| against necromancy present in most ancient belief systems.
| The dead should not be made to speak the words of the
| living. And we should not create for ourselves any
| illusions about the completeness or finality of death.
|
| It's not so much that it's a moral transgression as that it
| will undermine and corrupt our own understanding of what it
| means to be a living person.
| xwdv wrote:
| Turns out, it doesn't mean much to be a living person.
| _Ideas_ are what matter to society, not the individual
| that spawns them. When you kill a revolutionaire, you are
| only killing a man.
| xwdv wrote:
| This will be a fairly trivial problem to solve. Each spoken
| word can be cryptographically signed on some kind of
| distributed public ledger and unless the words originate from
| a verified origin you cannot assume something you hear was
| indeed spoken by the original source LLM.
|
| _Only_ verified sentences coming from your LLM clone can be
| considered the actual you.
| cryptoz wrote:
| But like, you can't know what someone would have said in the
| future if they aren't there to say it. No amount of LLM
| improvements would be able to know the real internal thoughts
| and memories of someone. You could guess, sure, but you don't
| know with any certainty.
|
| People change. Small things change people - seeing a car speed
| by might alter your opinion on some variety of things, but no
| LLM was there to capture that moment.
|
| It will always be a guess. You can never know for sure what
| someone who is deceased would think about something in the
| future since they are simply not there.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| This is a startup - digital tombstones or a digital dia de los
| muertos.
| Dig1t wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| Oh man what a time to be alive. The creativity is amazing. Bravo.
| smlacy wrote:
| https://nitter.net/charliebholtz/status/1724815159590293764
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| I tried making something like this but OpenAI restricts Vision
| API calls to 100 per day rn
| kadomony wrote:
| Given 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 wrote:
| I was so bummed about that. It makes sense of course but those
| videos were really fun.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Was 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Too 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.
| kadomony wrote:
| Same. When I logged into YouTube and saw "Scholar's Lore", my
| heart sunk and I immediately knew what had come to pass.
| Attenborough is fiercely protective of his voice.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| That was such a great channel. The voice was paired with pitch
| perfect writing as well. The script had exactly the sort of
| flow that an Attenborough BBC program would have, plus it was
| actually really informative.
|
| He really should re-dub the entire series with a unique AI
| generated voice and repost. They wouldn't be as good, but still
| pretty close.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| There's AI generated word-salad debate between Herzog and Zizek
| https://infiniteconversation.com/
| pacifika wrote:
| Flagged by Safari for an invalid cert
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Should happen on any browser. Try
| https://www.infiniteconversation.com/ instead.
| willseth wrote:
| Came here to say this. This is correct.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Mike Rowe would be good for doing work around the house.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| In the tweet he says he is using 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 wrote:
| It 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.
| hyperific wrote:
| This is nuts. I want a version of this where Emma Thompson
| narrates my life like Stranger than Fiction.
| jph wrote:
| You're right, Stranger than Fiction is perfect for this, and
| her narration would be excellent.
|
| "Harold checks his watch then begins to read Hacker News...."
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Reminded 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
|
| (Of course they used a real fake voice for all of them.)
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I 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?
| nextworddev wrote:
| Wonder 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 wrote:
| In 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 wrote:
| Looks like it just does it every 5 seconds
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Take my money
| divbzero wrote:
| YouTube 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...
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Interesting ... 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 wrote:
| Related: https://github.com/cbh123/narrator
| floatrock wrote:
| Isn'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.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| "... 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 wrote:
| I 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."
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(page generated 2023-11-15 23:00 UTC)