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Comment by vunderba | Hacker News Reader

I do think that voice cloning for personal usage has actual genuine uses - in fact there was a relatively interesting news article about a person who was irrevocably losing their voice who had their vocal pattern cloned.

https://www.voanews.com/a/illness-took-away-her-voice-ai-cre...

That being said, it does seem a bit bizarre that the repo's home page is proudly trumpeting the ability to co-opt other people's identities without their permission (and yes your unique vocal pattern is definitely part of your identity - I mean it's used in some forms of biometric data). They're doing the project a bit of a disservice.

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Of course there are legitimate uses, which means everyone should have completely unfettered access and nobody selling it should be responsible for irresponsible users. Personally, I’m sick of the government limiting my artistic freedom because the mediums I use might be misused by a tiny group of bad actors. For example, it’s unnecessarily difficult to source pineapple grenades for my large scale abstract punched tin crafts. The other people who live in my apartment building haven’t complained when I asked if they had a problem with it, so what’s the problem? And when I can get ahold of it, white phosphorous makes a great addition to my annual deep-woods pyrotechnic light shows. I just don’t understand this nanny state garbage.

Take my upvote you greedy bastard.

Taken, as recommended. It tingled.

Polonium has useful uses

If nothing else, I can confirm it’s delicious.

Right? I am an avid keeper of terrariums and micro-ecosystems. Government over-reach means I am having a really hard time seeding my anthrax enclosure.

Ridiculous! Complete overreach. Be strong, oppressed one. “This too shall pass.”

It does have actual genuine uses. I'm in the process of recording a series of tutorials for my peers but I'd like them to hear things in my voice so it doesn't sound like I have offloaded the work to someone else.

I don't know if this helps or harms the credibility but I can't really talk more than an hour without seriously straining my voice. So cloning it sounds like a great use-case for someone with a similar problem.

Looking forward to trying this.

I like this idea. I've been playing with the idea of having all my blog entries have corresponding narration with my own voice but I'd love to see some kind of voice cloner + gradio interface that let's me make some adjustments to things like cadence, delivery, etc. (I mean beyond just making me sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks).

Wondercraft.ai It's not mine, just used it for a bit few months ago.

I don't know about changing tone but I have used Adobe Podcast editor and it allows you adjust the words and rearrange what you said so you can cut "umms" and stuff. I know they are constantly adding features so I don't know if you can improve cadence and stuff but worth looking at if you have adobe stuff

  > so it doesn't sound like I have offloaded the work to someone else.

So, deception. Deception that you feel is justified, but deception nonetheless.

I disagree. Deception is the act of convincing one in untrue information.

The information I'm conveying is truthful and it's my words. The voice, generated or not, is not what I'm trying to convince people into believing.

That is an interesting perspective. I disagree that there is no deception, but do see the validity in your point. Thank you.

When my IoT geiger counter starts going off, I do what the in-home PA system's voice to be Admiral Adama warning my family of an imminent radiological threat, and preparing the Vipers for launch.

Edward James Olmos if you're reading this, I'm willing to pay a license fee, but then I expect actual recordings and not just AI bullshit. I'm not pirating your voice, you're refusing to let me hire it.

proudly trumpeting the ability to co-opt other people's identities without their permission

EXACTLY. Clone the wrong person's voice and it's game over.

It's useful for some things, like satire. Presidents Play is a good series in YouTube where it uses US presidents' cloned voices for comedic satire.

A gun is useful to shoot someone, what has that to do with it being right or wrong?

Not sure you picked the most cogent example because lots of people will debate you on that topic...

Randy Travis also used AI on his last album after losing his voice.

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