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Comment by losvedir | Hacker News Reader

Someone at work shared this and I thought it was hilarious and awesome. A number of other people found it disrespectful or gross. I'm sort of fascinated at the values divide.

I can see why SAG/ASTRA, or voice actors, aren't going to like this technology, but it doesn't feel all that different to any other industry swept away by tech, whether that's farming, horses and carriages, mining, etc. In other words, I can see the negative economic impact it will have on some people, which we may (or may not) want to protect via legislation, but I don't see how it escalates to a moral question.

"Disrespectful" to me is flipping off David Attenborough, not getting a computer to amusingly narrate mundane things in a decent facsimile of his voice.

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This demonstration is respectful. It’s funny. It’s obvious parody.

But, the tech can be used to make disrespectful content.

Look forward to: David Attenborough narrates porn.

I don’t know what we can do. Ain’t no easy answers. But do we want courts and $Lawyers deciding what is respectful?

> Look forward to: David Attenborough narrates porn.

Here you go: https://youtu.be/kwAEVII8FRM?si=oF0Vu5Zgk7fUgvDz&t=491 (NSFW!)

Courts and lawyers will do a bad job, and also the best job out of every option available. As it has been for 100 years.

Voice cloning seems much harder to regulate with copyright than most other issues because 1) there's a continuous spectrum of vocal similarity 2) the tools of voice cloning are available to hundreds of millions of people 3) there may be several real individuals who could claim a voice similar to David Attenborough was also similar to theirs.

Using trademarks seems like a more realistic means of regulation. Allowing David Attenborough to sue anyone that falsely and publicly credits him as a narrator seems feasible within existing law, and extending this to cover anti-avoidance tactics like "narrated in the style of David Attenborough" wouldn't be that much of an overreach.

Didn't courts already rule that AI art is not infringing on the original works that it was trained on.

I doubt that people are gonna be satisfied with the same voices, instead you will end up with David Attenborough mixed with Morgan Freeman and Patrick Steward.

I can't wait to hear the new compelling ads using this technology and I anticipate the scandal when people realize that one of the very charismatic voices belongs to an Austrian who was born in 1933 because I guarantee that his voice will end up in the training data.

Here is an idea for someone who like playing with this stuff, personalized entertainment. Pop songs sung by a voice that is a mix of Shakira, Brittany Spears and Lady Gaga, written by Chat GPT-4.

I'm sure the Brits would claim since 1066.

A full year ago I heard an extremely racist AI "David Attenborough" narration where he described an encounter between an Asian man and a Black man on a city street as if he were describing aggressive animals. It 100% sounded like a documentary though, a normal person would have no idea Attenborough wasn't actually narrating the world's most racist nature film. Now that is disrespectful, and already exists.

If I recall, soon after 4chan discovered this "hilarious trick", the API access for the AI narration tool was shut off. But those moats aren't going to last forever.

I believe Tom Hanks already had some one deep fake him into endorsing some medicare scam product. I'd be more worried about that than the unsavory narration which most people probably would assume was fake.

Teaching people to distrust celebrity endorsements wouldn't be the worst outcome.

There are millions of years of evolution conditioning humans to trust things that are familiar. It's naive to think we'll adapt effectively and quickly to extreme manipulation.

Adapting effectively and quickly is kind of our thing, also backed by millions of years of evolution.

You're being a little flip but adapting to one thing usually comes with compromising something else. Hanks is just an example of trusting a leader or authority. Whether you think he's a good fit for that is immaterial, everyone will be compromised.

Asking for critical thinking is all well and good but just the _knowledge_ that it's easy to generate gobs of high-fidelity forgeries, all corroborating each other as falsified evidence, could have chilling consequences by eroding faith in institutions and promoting misinformation and conspiracy theorizing.

You can adapt and still end up worse off than you were before there was anything to adapt to.

Perhaps we need to build out a way for clients to be able to trust content. Not signed with Hanks' public key, or the key of a reputable news source? The client, my tv, or whatever, should make that obvious somehow. The industry certainly spends plenty of effort developing ways for content producers to trust clients.

But I'm probably just another tech bro suggesting a technological solution to a social problem.

Or Attenborough attributing the wonders of the planet to a god.

A great SaaS idea! It subtly injects "glory to the creator" type messages in existing science documentaries, for consumption by faith-based institutions.

The generalized kernel of your comment here leaves me deeply unsettled.

Imagine the following:

* AI discovers community's non-trivial shibboleths

* AI detects pauses in video stream where 1) the speaker is off camera and 2) there's space for a non-trivial shibboleth to be inserted

* Convert nearly all media from what it is into a lowkey propaganda piece where arbitrary community believes that their favorite celebrities are actually closet members of their community.

Example:

David Attenborough narrates a scene of ants using pheromones to encourage the colony that they need to dig out more tunnels. Then in a brief pause adds: "They must construct additional pylons."

Most people just glaze over the line, meanwhile starcraft players are having a different reaction.

Reminds me of "Cosmos for Rednecks":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX1Q8PQLAhQ

God no.

"> Look forward to: David Attenborough narrates porn.*

Note that this basic idea was previously realized as the 1999 movie "The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human" starring Carmen Electra and narrated by David Hyde Pierce.

To be fair, I would pay folding money to hear Attenborough narrate pr0n.

I think, as often, the truth lies down the middle. SAG/AFTRA and the WGA were right in fighting to not give studios free rein to use AI to own their likeness or replace them in the process. Likewise, people who say using AI tech for lighthearted fun like this is “disrespectful” are just having a kneejerk reaction at this point. I struggle to see a how this is different from say, a song parody.

Your entire friends group is sharing a really funny video with your voice reciting something, some manager get's upset about it and you have to explain to management how you had nothing to do with it.

Even if you are fine with it, not everyone will be.

How is it different than someone making a funny video where they impersonate David Attenborough? Those aren’t generally considered disrespectful, right?

Like, I get the potential scale is different. But this is some joke video, not someone trying to actually replace David Attenborough or something.

I agree and the difference is commercial rights and intent. Parody, jokes, etc are fine. Using this to replace him on a documentary, not okay. Fair use already covers this all they have to do is extend copyright protections to peoples likeness and voices

> Using this to replace him on a documentary, not okay.

I think it's legal if you're the copyright holder, e.g. Disney putting dead actors in their movies did not need anybody's permission, nor does any derivative work such as videogames as they own the image right to the characters they play.

It would be interesting if they did a Planet Earth IV with Attenbrough's voice without his consent as David plays himself really...Not a fictional character.

> copyright protections to peoples likeness and voices

What happens when you look or sound like someone (more) famous though?

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