What is a legitimate use case for this? I can think of a hundred applications for deceiving others but struggle to come up with a scenario where one would want their voice cloned or reproduced.
You're recording a podcast and want to tweak some of your own words, without the hassle of re-recording.
You're an indie game developer, and want to have vibrant NPCs with their unique voices and dialogues powered by a LLM.
You're producing a movie, and want to tweak certain lines of dialogue; with the consent of the talent.
You suffer from health conditions and are gradually losing your voice, but you still want to communicate.
There are certainly legitimate use cases of this technology. I personally believe illegitimate use cases overshadow the legitimate use cases, but I don't think it's fair to say there are no legitimate applications.
We should strictly regulate the use of this technology by criminalizing abuse; not by banning it altogether (which is pretty hard in the case of software and small models).
> You're producing a movie, and want to tweak certain lines of dialogue; with the consent of the talent.
The latest agreement to end the last round of strikes was to prevent this very thing.
Of your list, the medical condition to give someone their real voice instead of a Hawking voice would be the most legit reason. Everything else is a skewed sense of morally acceptable as I think they are shady
I wouldn't go as far as that. Plenty of indie to AAA games are produced using commodity assets / resources (e.g. why make your own tree model, when there's plenty of pre-mades in the marketplace). Yes, that takes away work from artists, but it is part of productivity and game development.
Centuries ago, elevators were manned. Today, they're all electronic. It is the inevitable march of progress and productivity.
There's a difference from starting the project by using OpenVoice vs hiring an actor for 90% of the work but then cloning their voice because you can' be bothered to reschedule the same actor for creative changes.
But if you start that project by making a voice sound like Morgan Freeman because you can't afford Morgan Freeman but you feel entitled then you can go pound sand. So your choice of making a generated voice should be of a voice that someone else isn't already using.
You may not be trying hard at all then. The first thing I thought was to clone your voice to use in real-time translations. I can probably think of several others mentioned in comments below, but this is a 100% always-useful never-nefarious(assuming perfect translation not being maliciously used) application.
Yes, I have, just now, been thinking about how few, and featureless, syllables I can utter to determine if an unknown caller has a legitimate reason for calling, such as a large-delivery driver, medical lab or other real call.
It seems the best tactic is to make the caller do as much of the talking as possible.
Or use a generic cloned voice to interact with unknown callers.
I have a friend with a paralysed larynx who is often using his phone or a small laptop to type in order to communicate. I know he would love it if it was possible to take old recordings of him speaking and use that to give him back "his" voice, at least in some small measure.
Unfortunately I have yet to see something that can do this and provide a voice model that you could plug into Android TTS and/or Windows which are what he uses.
Fixing small errors in narration, voiceovers, or other recorded content.
Translation of recorded content with the original voice into new languages.
Comedy as long as it’s obvious that it’s a fake.
Actually intentionally selling your voice to be the voice of some text to speech product. Maybe I want Alexa to have the voice of Danny Devito, as long as he’s ok with it and getting paid.
My wife has been sick all week and has to communicate over text because her voice has gone. We’ve been talking about making voice clones of ourselves for situations like this. Some people never regain their voices so preserving them before they lose it is super valuable.
I imagine training people, and having everything I say be available in any language, matching my tonality, and being able to reach a global audience. I'm very much looking forward to this.
Indie Gamedevs can do their own Voice Acting?
See also indie film, same use case.
Actor dies / hit by buss before a work is finished - Create a few more lines posthumously (it'll be in the fine print of the contract that you allow voice & image fakes in the event not able to do them).
Satire, Pranks, and alleged pranks (stuff that makes folk laugh).
You're an indie game developer, and want to have vibrant NPCs with their unique voices and dialogues powered by a LLM.
You're producing a movie, and want to tweak certain lines of dialogue; with the consent of the talent.
You suffer from health conditions and are gradually losing your voice, but you still want to communicate.
There are certainly legitimate use cases of this technology. I personally believe illegitimate use cases overshadow the legitimate use cases, but I don't think it's fair to say there are no legitimate applications.
We should strictly regulate the use of this technology by criminalizing abuse; not by banning it altogether (which is pretty hard in the case of software and small models).