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Comment by _gabe_ | Hacker News Reader

> All code and models used for this website were written and trained as part of my research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The code and models are privately owned and are not to be sold or distributed for unauthorized use.

Does anybody else find the irony in this statement absolutely amazing lol.

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The author took someone else's IP as training data, trained a model on someone else's compute, and then gets extremely bent out of shape when others use the model without crediting them?

This entire thread is honestly so disturbing, this comment especially. Not only is it rife with misinformation (using copyrighted material for training is totally legal and the whole project is paid out of pocket), but is it really that big of a deal to want credit for the work they’ve done? The developer has had their work stolen by companies, influencers, and grifters, and people here are getting pissy that they can’t wait 10 seconds to wait for a popup.

I don’t know why, but I honestly expected more from HN.

You're right about the compute part being wrong. I never said it wasn't legal, just that they took someone else's work to train it. I would hope that voice synthesis is illegal without permission from the voice's owner, but I imagine it is untested so far.

But it's not just about the popup - it 's more that when your work is fundamentally about using reusing someone else's character, it feels pretty hypocritical to be so focused on making sure you get credit.

Just curious. Do you feel the same way about DALL-E and Imagen?

If they are used in a tool that lets you generate someone's likeness as part of user-specified new content, yes. But unlike 15.ai that isn't their core purpose and no such tool exists.

I share this sentiment entirely. There seems to be a growing trend on HN that negativity is popular. A project like this, to me at least, would seem to be right up HN's street.

Shame to see the toxicity over a passion project, whos creator generously went out of his way to answer the questions and ridiculous comments.

I think there are a bunch of people who consider this work unethical or at least deeply in the grey. The negativity isn't that surprising

Making things up out of thin air like “the creator used someone else’s compute” goes beyond negativity because someone thinks the project is in the grey. That is just straight up disinformation.

Just stop it. We need good vibes, not this toxic hate or we will drive the cool people away.

> wait 10 seconds to wait for a popup

The problem is that after having to wait for 10 seconds to reject their terms of service (which you should be able to reject right away) before even being able to see what the site is about, they are rickrolling you, effectively giving you the finger for not wanting to agree to their terms without context. That‘s quite unprofessional, counterproductive and antagonistic.

https://tlo.mit.edu/learn-about-intellectual-property/owners....

"...MIT owns inventions made or created by MIT faculty, students, staff, and others participating in sponsored research projects or in MIT programs using significant MIT funds or facilities or those inventions developed pursuant to a written agreement with MIT..."

I got RickRolled as soon as arriving to the page. :-)

So is this a blanket approval for anyone with AI synthesis of voices, to sample hours of any _copyrighted content_ and come up with a TTS that is copyrighted to the new owner?

In other words, if I deep fake someone's photo on someone else's body, I own the rights of that 'model'?

I don't get it.

This is from the MIT license, which is the school he's doing research for (emphasis mine):

> Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so

His TOS is literally the antithesis to the free nature of the MIT license :)

This is my fault. I do see how that part is worded ambiguously (I'll fix it later), but I have not been with MIT in years. Copy pasting what I've written in another comment:

To clarify: I have not been with MIT in years. I was paid the minimum hourly rate (roughly $14 an hour) to work on a related project during my undergraduate years, which eventually evolved into this project years down the road. (In fact, I had to pay for my own compute to get my work started - MIT never offered me any credits.)

And to address the philosophy behind the MIT license (also copy pasted from another comment):

For the past three years, I have done nothing but work on this project nonstop. I've been working on massive improvements (that some have pointed out in this thread) that I've been stuck on for the past several months, but I'm getting close to finishing that up.

I don't feel comfortable publishing or releasing anything until I know for a fact that I can make no further improvements. It's not out of corporate greed or anything like that - I'm just really paranoid about getting out the best work possible.

Gotcha, I have no problem with wanting to keep your personal work closed source. I was just under the impression that this had been created as research funded by MIT. If that's not the case, then sorry for the confusion :)

Being from MIT and releasing work under MIT license are two very, very different things.

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