Echoes of when Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of stealing her voice. That time it was impossible to tell who was in the right - there was no available recording of OpenAI's supposed Scarlett clone - they had pulled it immediately for fear of bad PR.
Then came the completely nonsensical HN threads with people arguing about something they hadn't heard.
Maybe don't redo that whole thing? Could we at least make sure to secure some examples of A and B, this time?
--
Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice (May 20, 2024)
I listen to some Jupiter Broadcasting podcasts. The main host (Chris Fisher) regularly pops up in NotebookLLM content, with his voice. Sometimes it just jumps in, and then after some time out again. It’s usually a pretty perfect imitation, I can’t hear the difference .
Edit, here an older piece, there have been many since: [0], it’s the 3rd voice that enters the NotebookLLM clip so it takes a minute before it comes in (shared this clip here late 2024 [1]).
I also have a hard time hearing it in this example, your second example is just the default NotebookLLM male. But there are much better examples of NotebookLLM cloning voices out there. See my other comments.
Btw, are you sure that is the part David Greene is upset about? The NotebookLLM hosts will vary their voice, and jump into and out of different voices in a glitchy manner sometimes.
Why is everybody so inclined to defend NotebookLLM here? I've heard Chris Fisher and other Jupiter Broadcasting hosts mimicked , but also leo Laporte (from TWIT) for example. It's obvious it is trained on a lot of open podcasting material and clones a voice every now and then.
I don't think this is necessarily a fair comparison. In your sample of David Greene, he's being _interviewed_, which is different than hosting a radio show or podcast. For instance, turn on the nightly news and listen to the very bizarre intonation used by the newscasters. This is something they do for the broadcast, it's not how they normally talk.
For a fair comparison, you need to compare audio of David as a broadcaster rather than being interviewed: https://youtu.be/W-uGqHXoSRw?t=5 . As someone who has listened to Greene's voice on NPR a lot over the years, I hear the similarity.
People are bad at distinguishing strange voices in a lineup, yes. That is, anyone in this thread who hasn't heard much of either the NotebookLM or Greene's voice would be a terrible witness.
However, the equation changes considerably when the voice becomes familiar. You can imagine it like going from CPU to an ASIC. The brain is rather good at telling when a voice is your friend or not, the evolutionary pressure should be clear. Therefore, the people most qualified to speak on this matter will be first and foremost Greene and his podcast fans. It's a matter of exposure.
There seems to be a lot of confusion in this thread around the human mind's processing of voice sounds.
As with most (all?) things we do, exposure is king. This is how we don't die from trying to process infinite dimensional reality. The brain compresses, it prunes. Things seem similar if you don't have much need to distinguish them.
Unless you've listened to hours of either NotebookLM or Greene, you simply won't be able to participate in the distinguishing of these voices with much ability.
I know someone who is one of the top-rated voiceover artists on Fiverr. Their voice appeared on a video recently I heard and it was definitely cloned from them (as it was not a project they would have worked on).
It's so easy to do now. You can just grab your favorite voiceover artist's demo reel and clone it from there. The chances of getting caught are slim, and what is the (poorly paid) artist going to do? Most of them will lack the resources to fund a protracted court case to sue some anonymous users in Tajikistan making AI slop videos en masse.
20 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 51.1 ms ] threadThen came the completely nonsensical HN threads with people arguing about something they hadn't heard.
Maybe don't redo that whole thing? Could we at least make sure to secure some examples of A and B, this time?
--
Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice (May 20, 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40421225 (1021 comments)
OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show (May 23, 2024)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40448045 (1218 comments)
Turns out he still has his own voice, that one sounds like him.
Edit, here an older piece, there have been many since: [0], it’s the 3rd voice that enters the NotebookLLM clip so it takes a minute before it comes in (shared this clip here late 2024 [1]).
[0] https://podverse.fm/clip/Vy4y7ZG2Rd
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=NotebookLM%20Copied%20a%20Podc...
David Greene: https://youtu.be/xYxQrLp4MQk
NotebookLM: https://youtu.be/AR4dRtzFvxM
I think he just has "podcast guy" voice. It's pretty generic.
Btw, are you sure that is the part David Greene is upset about? The NotebookLLM hosts will vary their voice, and jump into and out of different voices in a glitchy manner sometimes.
Why is everybody so inclined to defend NotebookLLM here? I've heard Chris Fisher and other Jupiter Broadcasting hosts mimicked , but also leo Laporte (from TWIT) for example. It's obvious it is trained on a lot of open podcasting material and clones a voice every now and then.
However, the equation changes considerably when the voice becomes familiar. You can imagine it like going from CPU to an ASIC. The brain is rather good at telling when a voice is your friend or not, the evolutionary pressure should be clear. Therefore, the people most qualified to speak on this matter will be first and foremost Greene and his podcast fans. It's a matter of exposure.
As with most (all?) things we do, exposure is king. This is how we don't die from trying to process infinite dimensional reality. The brain compresses, it prunes. Things seem similar if you don't have much need to distinguish them.
Unless you've listened to hours of either NotebookLM or Greene, you simply won't be able to participate in the distinguishing of these voices with much ability.
It's so easy to do now. You can just grab your favorite voiceover artist's demo reel and clone it from there. The chances of getting caught are slim, and what is the (poorly paid) artist going to do? Most of them will lack the resources to fund a protracted court case to sue some anonymous users in Tajikistan making AI slop videos en masse.