I have no qualms with the tech existing, assuming I do is you creating an argument I don't have. In fact I work in ML generative modeling. But just because a tool exists doesn't mean you shouldn't be thoughtful about how you use it. Technology isn't really good or bad on its own.
> there's no individuals actually being harmed
This is debatable. I think a lot matters on how you think of dead people. I believe most people would take the stance that it is unethical to use someone's image to promote things they did not stand for. You're right that it is very difficult to impossible to harm a dead person, but there's still respect. There's also a family that lives with how you portray said person. They _can_ be harmed.
> the end-game is just going to be updated contracts which demand rights to use the performer's likeness for these sorts of purposes
If there's (informed) consent then what's the issue? (If we assume that said person knows what they have consented to)
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but your response seems in bad faith and to operate on many assumptions about me that just do not hold true. Frankly this is not the kind of conversations I want to have on HN or expect to have. I'm happy to argue about the ethics and have differing opinions, but I do not appreciate my image being depicted with a broad brush. As long as the conversation is in good faith we can discuss a lot of controversial things and disagree all day and everything will be fine. But turning
> Bourdain likely would not have liked this
into
> a fashionable hint of 21st century doom-cult luddism
Is just ridiculous. That's far too large of a leap and such comments are not welcome here. You're welcome to try again but you'll need to update your priors.
You are essentially asking why bother investigating and forming opinions and value judgements on the the use of new technology. Humans use opinions and values to decide how they want to interact with the outside world. Even if the technology exists and no living are harmed, people can find it distasteful. people can decide not to support what they find distasteful. They can decide to voice support actors unions if the issue ever comes up. They can tell their friends and family how they would like their likeness used as these technologies become more prevalent.
I've had an idea to use propellerhead recycle to chop the output cloned voice into syllables, and then "play" the chopped parts in rhythm, through autotune.
The issue is you get Eifel 65 sounding autotune if your base vocals are monotonic or way off key. The only way I can think of fixing this is to use something like audacity's pitch changer that doesn't affect the speed of the sample - rough the lyrical tones in with audacity/recycle, then autotune it where it needs to go.
I'd like to say I'm too busy to get this workflow going, but mostly I'm lazy and someone else will do it first - and better - I can't improve the AI cloning software.
I've had a new version of this in the works for a few months. It'll launch maybe this weekend? It supports user-trained data sets, which should be pretty neat.
Your approach sounds kind of like unit selection or vocaloid. Do it!! :)
I use(d) "Real time voice cloning" available on github. I have used your site before, i think that's actually the reason i wanted to find software to do it myself originally!
I ended up using mine to do the announcements on all of the ham repeaters in Central Louisiana. I'm not sure how many are still active, but i had a couple of podcasters and two presidents doing the announcements for a while.[2]
Nice work, wrapping it all in a website/service. I'll bookmark it!
[0] https://soundcloud.com/djoutcold/gottfried1-1
I love your use case for ham radio. That's brilliant!
And thanks. I'm glad there's other people messing around with voice cloning, still.
It's coming soon.
I'm working on mocap, photogrammetry, and compositing on Twitch, and I'm leveraging vocodes for subscriber interaction in the stream.
Are either of you working in this domain? Want to chat?
Check out Ableton Live’s “Simpler”
It does contain lyrics, but the singing is not AI generated.