[swatcoder]

We're used to hearing some kind of identity behind voices -- we unconsciously sense clusters of vocabulary, intonation patterns, ticks, frequent interruption vs quiet patience, silence tolerance, response patterns to various triggers, etc that communicate a coherent person of some kind.

We may not know that a given speaker is a GenX Methodist from Wisconsin that grew up at skate parks in the suburbs, but we hear clusters of speech behavior that lets our brain go "yeah, I'm used to things fitting together in this way sometimes"

These don't have that.

Instead, they seem to mostly smudge together behaviors that are just generally common in aggregate across the training data. The speakers all voice interrupting acknowledgements eagerly, they all use bright and enunciated podcaster tone, they all draw on similar word choice, etc -- they distinguish gender and each have a stable overall vocal tone, but no identity.

I don't doubt that this'll improve quickly though, by training specific "AI celebrity" voices narrowed to sound more coherent, natural, identifiable, and consistent. (And then, probably, leasing out those voices for $$$.)

As a tech demo for "render some vague sense of life behind this generated dialog" this is pretty good, though.

[adamhartenz]

To be fair, the majority of podcasts are from a group of generic white guys, and they almost sound identical to these AI generated ones. The AI actually seems to to do a better job too.

[freestyle24147]

Citation absolutely needed. You call this fair?

> the majority of podcasts are from a group of generic white guys

[sangnoir]

https://podcastcharts.byspotify.com/ keep the Pareto distribution in mind

[neom]

I did the best fast research I could given not wanting to spend more than 20 minutes on it and came to this result (aprox): - Mixed/Diverse: 48.0% - White Men: 35.0% - Women: 8.0% - Non-White: 6.0% - White Woman: 2.0% - Non-White Woman: 1.0%

[tightbookkeeper]

I love the "white = generic = bland" meme too. All the science and literature before 1930 it was trained on is also likely "generic white guys".

[sourcepluck]

I laughed and sort of agreed with this, in spirit. You're off on the details I think though.

When I listened to the audio samples before coming to the comments, I thought: "oh, like those totally lifeless and bland U.S. accents from podcasts, YT, etc."

I wouldn't associate it with skin colour or gender though at all. I've no idea why you'd go there - any skin colour and any gender is absolutely welcomed into the fold of U.S. cultural production, if they can produce bland generic "content" sincerely enough, it seems to me.

Disclaimer: many U.S. accents are interesting and wonderful (Colorado; Tom Waits), they don't all sound generic and bland. I have U.S. friends therefore I can pass judgment (TM).

[TimTheTinker]

Whether this stops at the uncanny valley or progresses to specific "AI celebrity" voices, I'm left thinking the engineers involved in this never stopped to think carefully about whether this ought to be done in the first place.

[jsheard]

"Surely my genAI product won't be used to spam zero-effort slop all over the internet!"

- guy whose genAI product will definitely be used to spam zero-effort slop all over the internet.

[_DeadFred_]

I think their main target is corporate creative jobs. Background music to ads/videos/etc. And just like with all AI, they will eat the jobs that support the rest of the system, making it a one and done. It will give a one time boost, and then be stuck at that level because creatives won't have the jobs that allowed them to add to the domain. In this case new music styles. New techniques. It's literally eating the seed corn where the sprouts are the creatives working in the boring commercial jobs that allow them to practice/become experts in the tools/etc that they then build up it all. Their goal is cut the jobs that create their training data and the ecosystem that builds up/expands the domain. Everywhere AI touches will basically be 'stuck using Cobol' because AI will be frozen at the point in time where the energy infusing 'sprouts' all had their jobs replaced by AI and without them creating new output for AI to train on it's all ossified.

We are witnessing in real time the answer to why 'The Matrix' was set when it was. Once AI takes over there is no future culture.

[GuB-42]

Assuming you are right and that we will miss a generation of creatives and AI keeps making crap, why can't the creative field regrow. AI won't remove creativity from human genes.

As people get fed up with AI generated crap, companies will start to pay very good money to the few remaining good human creatives in order to differentiate themselves. The field will then be seen as desirable, people will start working hard for to get these jobs, companies will take apprentices hoping they will become masters later, etc... We may lose a generation, but certainly not the entire future.

Of course, it is just one of many possible futures, but I think the most likely if you take your assumptions as a postulate. It may turn out that AIs end up not displacing creative jobs too much, or going the other way, that AIs end up being truly creative, building their own culture together with humans, or not.

[thanksgiving]

It makes sense to me.

Step 0. Some People make novel art like a jingle that is unlike anything yet.

Step 1. Early use of said jingle creates a buzz and generated good sales results.

Step 2. It gets copied everywhere and by everyone. It is now a meme.

This is the step I think where generative AI can help. Slightly transform existing art to fit a particular purpose. This lets businesses save money by not paying humans do this work.

Problem is we don't know where the next person or when this step 0 comes from... When we soak up all the "slack" and send all the "money" to the top because lets face it that's how it will work. The money "saved" from AI won't make goods and services cheaper by any significant measure. We will still have to pay as much as we can afford to pay.

[grugagag]

> It's literally eating the seed corn where the sprouts are the creatives working in the boring commercial jobs that allow them to practice/become experts in the tools/etc that they then build up it all.

This is a big problem that needs to be talked about more, the endgoal of AI seems to be quite grim for jobs and generally for humans. Where will this pure profit lead to? If all advertising will be generated who will want to have anything to do with all the products they’re advertising?

[thanksgiving]

Reminds me of that famous clip from mad men where don suddenly realizes that if lucky strike can't say its cigarettes are safe, neither can its competitors and came up with "it's toasted".

In general, I have a feeling double digit growth forever is impossible. Facebook and Google both reported YoY growth in 15%+ this week iirc and I have a feeling they are only able to achieve this by destroying either competitors or adjacent industries rather than by "making the pie bigger". It will end at some point.

[wiz21c]

this is very spot on. There are tons of artists who have a job so they can sustain their own personal creativity.

[pmontra]

Almost everyone has a job to sustain their actual interests. Some of them happen to be musicians, writers, etc. Others play football, go fishing, talk to friends. There is nothing special in there. All of us will keep doing what we like to do even after AIs become the tool of mainstream creativity.

[FridgeSeal]

Yes but many people have jobs in their fields, which benefits their personal and/or public creative endeavours.

I’ve learnt things and been exposed to ideas developing software for work that I simply wouldn’t have if I was only doing it in my spare time.

[elpocko]

A meme parrot is posting the millionth copy of the same comment complaining about "slop". Slightly ironic.

[Fricken]

It's the holy grail. When people can have naturalistic conversations with their computers they will love it more than other people. Ai doesn't need to be useful so much as it needs to be loved. That's the secret to getting AI between people and everything they do in a day.

[lancesells]

Agreed. To me it sounds like bad voice-over actors reading from a script. So the natural parts of a conversation where you might say the wrong thing and step back to correct yourself are all gone. Impressive for sure.

[xico]

Yup. Plus the interactions you'd expect for instance in terms of matching style of voice in a normal discussion are missing. That being said it still sounds pretty impressive.

[htrp]

every step of technological advancement builds on top of the previous one.

now it's bad voice actors, in 2 years it'll be great ones

[Cthulhu_]

This is why voice actors are on strike to stop their voices from being used with AI. I mean it's probably futile.

[serf]

it's probably futile, and the 'AI/art protests' seem to miss the point that the protest itself is also encouraging The Man to seriously consider AI-powered replacement.

The protest itself is exactly the kind of thing that will be avoided by replacing humans, demonstrated writ-large for the people with the cheque-book.

I can understand the spirit of protest and why it occurs, but it just seems so out-of-line strategically/tactically when used against automation that's taking jobs.

Just the order of events is kind of funny to me, and this applies to automation-job-taking protest the world over : A technique is demonstrated that displaces workers, the workers then picket and refuse to work -- understandable, but faced with the current prospect of "This mechanism performs similar work for cheaper", it seems counter-productive to then demonstrate the worst-case-scenario for the patron : a work stoppage that an automated workforce would never experience, alongside legal fees that would never be encountered had they an automated work-force.

That all said, protest is one of the only weapons in the arsenal of the working -- it just feels as if the argument against automation is one of the places where that technique rings hollow.

In the case of media/movies/literature/etc, I think the power to force corporations to value humans is solely in the hands of the consumer -- and unfortunately that's such an unorganized 'group' that it's unlikely they will establish any kind of collective action that would instantiate change.