What is the point of them trying to create this? That something like this would mostly be used to create disinformation and create chaos is easily understood before making something like this.
Truly irresponsible
Truly irresponsible
I use TTS to listen to articles and stories that don't have access to an audiobook narrator. I've used some of the voices based on MBROLA tech, but those can grate after a while.
The more recent voice models are a lot higher quality and emotive (without the jarring pitch transitions of things like Cepstral) so are better to listen to. However, the recent models can clip/skip text, have prolonged silence, have long/warped/garbled words, etc. that make them harder to use longer term.
It's like we're stuck in some movie that came out in 1994[0], or something. Except, in this version, everything is gonna up sooner or later, anyway. Might as well profit from it along the way, right?
Le sigh.
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I can't even think of non malicious uses that are anything more than novelty or small conveniences. Meanwhile the malicious use cases are innumerable.
In a just world building this would be a severe felony, punished with prison and destruction of all of the direct and indirect source material.
On the one hand, I would love this kind of tech to be available for entertainment purposes. An RPG with convincing NPCs that are able to provide a novel experience for every player? Sounds great.
On the other: this is fraught with ethical problems, not to mention an ideal tool for fraud. At worst, it could be used as a weapon for total asymmetrical warfare on concepts like media integrity and an ideal tool for character assassination; disinformation, propaganda, etc.
I would happy welcome a world where this stuff is nerfed across the board, where videogames and porn are just chock full of AI voice-acting artifacts. We'll adjust and accept that as just a part of the experience, as we have with low fidelity media of the past. But my more cynical side tells me that's not what people in power are concerned about.
Perfecting the tech for wide-spread use has trade offs; need for caller id, ease of slandering until trust in voice uniqueness recalibrates, all of which is going to change soon anyway but giving only rich/bad actors the tech at first has its own set of trade offs. Head in the sand is the irresponsible way.