David Attenborough is now narrating my life
twitter.com
twitter.com
So there'd be no legal way to produce or share the model generating such a voice or its output.
Case in point, this bot was clearly trained on David Attenborough samples, perhaps it can't be used commercially without purchasing some rights to the man's likeness.
How folks can think it's reasonable to impersonate Morgan Freeman and use his voice to sell, for example, crypto crap. It's gross and should absolutely be illegal.
Whenever the topic of copying material for model training purposes arises on hn, however, a number of folks seem convinced such use falls under the rubric of “transformative” and will be considered fair use.
It’s hard to see how mixing (copying!) a bunch of books into a computer algorithm to produce (commercially!) content that might itself easily be incorporated into a book in the same market could possibly be fair use.
No, its a right of publicity/right of personality issue, not a copyright issue. While that's not a federal law issue in the US, its an issue in some US jurisdictions, and its a national law issue in a number of non-US jurisdictions.
The mistake is thinking “would not owe money under the current copyright regime” means “would not owe money”: there are more laws in the world than just copyright law.
If you did straight-up parodies of their songs, yes.
Now perhaps you could just happen to sound like a famous actor who isn't well known for their voice, like John krasinski or something, who does voice over ads but isn't super distinct. That would probably be fine but you're still going to have to slog through the world of voice talent auditions
I'm skeptical that using a narrator that happened to sound like David Attenborough or Morgan Freeman would be enough by itself to qualify for right of publicity unless it included obvious references to prior work, catch phases, or the like.
How about this scenario: they publish a youtube video, then someone says in the comments: hey you sound just like morgan freeman, then the company looking for the voice performance googles for morgan freeman, finds the comment and contacts them.
The rest is shades of grey. For example, if you're an incredible voice imitator and plan to do shows, negotiations would be wise. Even Weird Al asked for permission when he didn't had to, legally speaking.
But Weird Al does parodies, which is fair use. He's not trying to pass off an album as being a genuine Michael Jackson album or something.
What if a company chooses you as a voice artist largely on the basis that you sound like Morgan Freeman?
Honestly, it's offensive that they can "own" a general appearance. But their lawyers manage to enforce it.
But on the other hand, does "store brand lucky charms" have to pay a kick back to General Mills?
Was it Josh Robert Thompson, who is officially authorized? [1]
[1] https://filmschoolrejects.com/morgan-freeman-crab-in-barb-an...
At least do some James Earl Jones!
Makes you wonder if in a few years there will be licenses available for using someone's voice for such endeavours.
Wasn't as good as eleven labs, but it had enough options that I found a voice that I liked to listen to.
I don't see a solution to this, so I'll tend to believe the cynic's viewpoint that the final written law will be in favor of whoever has the most lawyers.
Where to put the bar is a specific issue, but the exemplars in their category stand out as recognizable.
It's actually simple. Take David Attenborough's name out of the picture.
"A generic British guy is now narrating my life" isn't as funny as implicating a known celebrity, which is where the legal issues would arise. A generic British guy isn't going to sue you.
Hell, you might even be able to get away with "A generic British guy who sounds like David Attenborough is now narrating my life."
By the same logic, all simulated faces look like some real person somewhere, but I wouldn't expect to simulate a face that looks like Brad Pitt and then use it in a TV commercial
Outside of that, I am not sure I'm seeing a moral or economic argument for making voice copyrightable. The usual argument about incentivizing creation doesn't apply here.
Not sure how you came to that conclusion. The bot mimics his speaking style very precisely.
I would like to hear it generate Kevin Conroy (R.I.P.) vocals for Christopher Nolan's Batman movies.
That said, it'll be interesting how the legal side of this shakes out. Does one own their likeness and voice? Who decides what that is? There are plenty of voice actors that can do a great Morgan Freedman or trump. How is that different?
> In the quiet chaos of an ordinary room, a lone figure peers into the abyss of a lens, a silent sentinel in the company of walls adorned with fragments of a life well-lived. The ambient light casts a celestial glow atop their crown, an unintentional halo in a moment of serendipity. The gaze, piercing yet calm, confronts the onlooker, challenging the nature of existence through the simple act of capturing a fleeting second in the digital ether. Here stands a human, enshrined in the mundane yet extraordinary tableau of their own making.
- Attenborough maybe.
It's a shame then - when you compare it to the situation between the nerdcore gangsta-rapper alter-ego of Stephen Hawking: MC Hawking; who was created without authorization by Dr. Hawking, and sold real physical CDs for a profit (and I own one!), but who ultimately received an endorsement from the late physicist who took it all in good humour - and arguably Stephen Hawking is a bigger public figure than David Attenborough.
...if it really does comes down to just the personal approval by the subject themselves (and not their legal/marketing/legal teams acting without them even being aware) then I'm concerned what it means for artistic liberty vs public figures.
He really should re-dub the entire series with a unique AI generated voice and repost. They wouldn't be as good, but still pretty close.
Perhaps for a few minutes we're going to be marveling at the achievements of developers who make these things! But most people here, and, in the near future, everybody else, understand that a programming accomplishment today is a boxed up SKU next year. Most likely, in a very short period of time, the overwhelming majority of people making use of this technology will have had no hand in the accomplishment of building it.
So, yeah. Impressive. Creepy.
"Harold checks his watch then begins to read Hacker News...."
Recordings moved the needle to your voice (when saying new phrases) is unique to you.
These voice cloning of the last few years means that your voice (as long as it is never recorded and remixed) is unique to you.
A far more difficult proposition.
It's not so much that it's a moral transgression as that it will undermine and corrupt our own understanding of what it means to be a living person.
Only verified sentences coming from your LLM clone can be considered the actual you.
People change. Small things change people - seeing a car speed by might alter your opinion on some variety of things, but no LLM was there to capture that moment.
It will always be a guess. You can never know for sure what someone who is deceased would think about something in the future since they are simply not there.
This is a brilliant and effective demo of why that's important.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WfZuNceFDM
(Of course they used a real fake voice for all of them.)
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/21/23840026/youtube-ai-music...
"Look in the eyez of this nerd. The intenzity of the ztupidity looking at back at you is juzt amazing."
...but...
What if you distributed code that when I ran it, and plugged in each of the Blue Planet / Planet Earth DVDs, it would learn how to do this, with a local model?
So is this a text to speech model while mimicking somebody's voice? That is pretty cool.
One thing I don't understand is how you get specific models for someone's voice. Do you fine tune to that voice?
The issue of style transfer is not something I understand for audio. Anyone have example papers to read? I am familiar with MuLan, MusicLM, and MusicGen.
And Elevenlabs is saying this about cloning other people's voices:
Can I clone anybody's voice?
Yes, as long as you have their consent. For Professional Voice Cloning, we have integrated robust security measures to make sure you can only clone your own voice. Unless you share it, your voice belongs and is available only to you.
But it looks like it's not enforced if the example in the tweet is possible.
But even if it would be enforced by the company, open-source models are getting close to them and they are harder to control. The public or commercial use of the output from these models can (and probably should) be limited by laws, but if the users want to use it privately (for example to narrate themselves) there is not much you can do to prevent it especially with the progress in this tech it will become more trivial to do it for anybody.
If I had to defeat such a thing, I'd try to fake the voice using a good-enough AI running locally.
Alternatively use some voice-changer/editing magic to make your own voice sound "good enough".
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-CopbQ_QgmM
I guess they’ve improved it since then.