Kitten TTS: 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source Voice Model | Hacker News Reader

Kitten TTS: 25MB CPU-Only, Open-Source Voice Model

algogist.com

We've moved the (relevant) comments to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44807868, which was posted by the project creators.

I've re-upped that thread to the same position the previous discussion (this one) was at.

Thanks for posting about our project in HN! I am one of the creators of KittenTTS

Here is the link to our repo: https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS

Very cool model, but the post is a caricature of AI writing. "Okay, let's get into the nitty-gritty. What makes this little beast tick? These aren't just bullet points on a GitHub README; these are the specs that will fundamentally redefine what you thought was possible with local AI." Sure.

Everybody always thinks everything is AI. AI learned from consuming writing.

This is a ouroboros that will continue.

(Not saying this is or isn't, simply that these claims are rampant on a huge number of posts and seem to be growing.)

This is strictly true but not correct. LLMs were trained on human-written text, but they were post-trained to generate text in a particular style. And that style does have some common patterns.

So are you saying all LLMs were post-trained in that style then?

Because, well, there's a huge number of models. Are they all, as they say, "in cahoots"? (working together, clandestinely)

if the people who develop and release these models were all optimizing for the same goals, they could converge on strategies or behaviors, without coordinating.

Seems like many train on the output of other models for post-training and catch some kind of cooties.

Examples of LLM-style text: short & punchy sentences, negative parallelism ("not just X, it's Y"), bullet points especially with emojis and bolded text. Overuse of em-dash.

This is a good list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

It's one thing to observe "LLM-generated writing all looks the same". Whether the LLMs were all post-trained the same way is a different question.

I don't agree "everyone says everything is AI". Do you have examples where a consensus of people are accusing something of being AI generated, where it lacks those indicators?

It's our fault—we've all been overusing emojis and the em—dash for years.

I know exactly what you mean ^_^ honestly — and I’m saying this with a certain satisfaction — it’s been difficult to stop smiling :)

It’s not slop — it’s inspiration!

Just reading through posts on here about various blogs/posts/opinion pieces there always seems to be a handful of people that jumps to "this is AI". And maybe it is! But the driving force behind this seems not to be to identify that something is AI, but because they spite it so (AI writing), to quickly rule out caring about the material if identified as AI slop.

The problem I see this leading to is plenty of legitimate written things getting thrown away because somebodys online exposure bubbles don't end up including a lot of Medium or Tumblr or a certain Discord or whatever bubble where _huge_ groups of people actually are writing in whatever $STYLE is being identified by the reader and commenter as AI. Which then, because of their post, also gets other people to not even look.

It seems like a disaster, frankly.

> But the driving force behind this seems not to be to identify that something is AI, but because they spite it so (AI writing), to quickly rule out caring about the material.

Your expressed concern is "people don't like AI; this dislike motivates people to dismiss the material".

I think it's misguided to assume motivation.

For myself, I dislike the writing style because it's insincere and inauthentic. If the author isn't motivated enough to write out something in their own words, what's there to motivate a reader?

> The problem I see this leading to is plenty of legitimate written things getting thrown away because somebodys online exposure bubbles don't end up

Do you have any actual examples where legitimate writing was dismissed as written by AI? If not, I'd suggest your concern is hypothetical.

I believe the same depth as your comment is a comment from another person who also writes like this.

And yes, I'm not writing a research paper, I'm posting a comment. Full Disclaimer for those not paying attention, this is an Opinion.

One: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44807103

Two: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44807541

I consistently get accused of AI writing, but I’m not really sure why. I use spellcheck, that’s about it. Although I am a fan of an appropriately used em-dash, I don’t really follow the other patterns. I also find that people say that as a form of character assassination though, literally denying your humanity lol.

Many of those rules are kind of hazy though. Curly Quotes, em-dash, etc are also signs of using MS Word for writing for examples.

There was a time everyone trained their models with ChatGPT output. You can still find open source models that tell you they're ChatGPT if you ask.

I'm one of the unlucky ones who has coincidentally trained myself over the past fifteen years to write in the style that is now largely recognized to be the ChatGPT style— bolded lists, clear section breakdowns with intro and concluding sentences, correct and liberal use of semicolons and em-dashes. The only parts of it I don't do are litter my text with random emojis or directly address the reader with simpering praise.

Sounds like someone that shoots for simple but effective communication, to me.

I mean, that has always been my intention with it— particularly in the context of something like a ticket or design doc where it's critical that other busy people be able to quickly get a high level overview and then scan for the bits that are most relevant or of interest to themselves.

It's just ironic that I've now been asked if I was using AI to write (or punch up) content that I've produced in this style when I most certainly was not.

The writing style we associate with AI is the 2010's blogging style that AI learned from... So it definitely could have been written by a person.

No it isn't, it's something new born from ingesting that stuff... That's exactly why a lot of us can detect it from a mile away.

No human comments on meta formatting like that outside the deepest trenches of Apple/FB corporate stuff.

> That's exactly why a lot of us can detect it from a mile away.

Is that tested and proven or just gut feeling?

You must not have read a lot of blogs... This style is 100% the pretentious kind of writing that was in vogue.

This is very much our internal newsletter at work, which is actually still written by human hand (and we know it is, she can't stand "using those things”).

Indeed the blurb is absurd and very off-putting. It's not a big deal that "It clocks in at under 25MB with just 15 million parameters", because text to speech is a long-solved problem, in fact the Texas Speak and Spell from 1978 (half a century ago FFS) solved it, probably with a good deal less than 25MB.

Speak and Spell was a toy. I loved it as a kid in the eighties. But it was very limited and sounded terrible.

I think it’s fair enough to just say that the writing is cringe, AI or not.

This is HOW I WRITE man yes I agree I take LITTLE help Of AI

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