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Comment by Lerc | Hacker News Reader

> * Voice cloning someone else’s voice to use it for voiceover

This is interesting because I was considering cloning my own voice as a way to record things without the inevitable hesitations, ums, errs, and stumbling over my words. By this standard I am allowed to do so.

But then I thought what does it even mean "someone else's" when multiple people can make a video, if my wife and I make a video together can we not then use my recorded voice because to her my voice is someone else.

I suspect all of these rules will have similar edge cases and a wide penumbra where arbitrary rulings will be autocratically applied.

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> ...to her my voice is someone else.

To her, your voice is your voice not someone else's voice.

If you share a Youtube account with your wife, "someone else" means someone other than you or your wife.

The more interesting and troubling point is your use of "synthetic you" to make the real you sound better!

Is this really any different to say using makeup, cosmetic plastic surgery, or even choosing to wear specific clothes?

A lot different? The equivalent would be applying makeup to your mannequin replacement. All the things you mention are decoration. Replacing your voice is more than a surface alteration. I guess if some clever AI decides to take issue with what I say, and uses some enforcement tactic to arm-twist my opinion, I could change my mind.

We already have people editing videos anyway, you never see the first cut. AI-matically removing umms is really just speeding up that process.

I think the suggestion being discussed was AI-cloning your voice, and then using that for text-to-speech. Audio generation, rather than automating the cuts and tweaks to the recorded audio.

Yes exactly. Thanks. Voice cloning was indeed the suggestion made above.

The ethical challenge in my opinion, is that your status as living human narrator on a video is now irrelevant, when you're replaced by voice cloning. Perhaps we'll see a new book by "George Orwell" soon. We don't need the real man, his clone will do.

> The more interesting and troubling point is your use of "synthetic you" to make the real you sound better!

Why?

Did you replace the real you with "AI you" to ask me "why"?

I presume you wouldn't do that? How about replacing your own voice on a video that you make, allowing your viewers to believe it's your natural voice? Are you comfortable with that deception?

Everyone has evolving opinions about this subject. For me, I don't want to converse with stand-in replacements for living people.

How’s that different from photoshopping images?

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