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by qiongzhouh 813 days ago
Hmm, that's interesting. I've been getting a lot of Instagram and Tiktok reels with the robotic TTS voice nowadays, I've just been assuming that it's a funny thing that people do so that they don't have to record their own voice.

Wondering how / if we should be filtering out this content now that you can make TTS voices that sounds like they're completely real
2 comments
jsheard 813 days ago
Even with a perfectly convincing TTS voice it's still given away by the fact that they don't show themselves on video interacting with the product, they usually just show a slideshow of official product images. At least some people must already be falling for this crudely generated content for it to be worth their while to produce it though.
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btown 813 days ago
There's an interesting phenomenon where a certain type of rapid-to-experience, entertaining content, often with an enjoyable twist, has become synonymous with the glaringly imperfect TikTok voice... and thus, conversely, creators use TTS to signal that their content is similarly entertaining. And as more and more traditional creators start to use TTS, real voices become devalued as a quality signal. Avoiding recording is only a part of the phenomenon!

https://gesserit.co/ (formerly tiktoktts) is one of the most popular ways to generate a TikTok-esque TTS voice outside of that platform. I don't think they could have chosen a better name!

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qiongzhouh 812 days ago
Wow, that voice on the page sounds exactly like what I hear on TikTok / Instagram all the time. Definitely evokes the feeling that I'm about to be entertained by something.

Thanks for sharing that, we'll have to think hard about how to measure the quality / realness of content online beyond the simple things like upvotes and subscriber count

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