#AI voices

[animentality]

The only creative thing that ai should be used for is making it sound like Joe Biden and Donald Trump and Barack Obama regularly play Call of Duty Overwatch Splatoon Minecraft together.

That's about it.

[inkabelledesigns]

It's incredibly frustrating and exhausting to have to question every piece of media that passes your screen as to whether or not it was made with generative ai. I don't like that I can't trust people not to use the literal theft machine for their projects. Especially when it comes to indies.

Like, so there's a new indie horror game called Zoochosis, right? I have no stakes in Zoochosis, a game about a zookeeper that's trying to stop the spread of a mutation with the animals isn't really my speed. But I'd heard of the people who made it before, and I wanted to see if they'd grown. The devs behind it are also responsible for another game, Sparky Marky, which used ai voices, much to my frustration. I tuned into a stream today where someone was playing it, and after hearing a little bit of the dialogue from Doc, I asked if they'd hired actual voice actors. The streamer seemed unconvinced that they had. So I immediately turned it off and decided to go hunting instead, because I needed to know if real people voiced in Zoochosis. I needed to know if this dev team learned anything from their last experience.

Thankfully, there are credits for the voice actors of this game, but they're very far down, which is a little disappointing. The common threads between them is that most of them have a Fiverr page, so I imagine they were hired through there, but I can't confirm that. Frankly I don't love Fiverr given they are also run rampant with generative ai right now, it's not inspiring confidence. But a number of these voice actors have full on websites for their voice work that seem pretty legit to me. In the case of Doc's voice, Tim Stephenson, most of his work is in commercial voice over, not character voice acting, so that explains some of what I was hearing. Commercial VO and character acting for games, shows, etc. are different skills with different needs. Just because someone can do one very well doesn't necessarily mean they're perfectly equipped to do both, especially when I didn't see credits for a voice director here. Without a director, you're recording remotely and going off of your instincts, and while many actors can have great instinct for performing, getting a performance that fits the vision of the project still requires some communication.

I think it's too soon to tell if these actors were actually paid for voice acting, of if these are ai voices synthesized from their likeness. The game is so new that it hasn't shown up on their imdb credits or personal website credits yet, and until it does, I'm gonna be a little skeptical. At the same time, there are many explanations for why the voice acting sounded off. The dev team behind Zoochosis has a lot of names that lead me to believe they may not be native English speakers (and I'm fairly certain I've heard that from others too). Writing and editing dialogue for a game in a language you don't speak is NOT EASY! That's a big ask, and if that's what's happening here, then I'd actually be very impressed by the quality of what I'd heard. It's just...frustrating. I expect this from big corporations and companies, but Zoochosis is an indie game. The folks over at Clapperheads are a small team making this thing real. And I'm troubled by the idea of an indie team, something built on passion and a desire for creative freedom, using generative ai. They're not the only ones to do so. Pastra, a YouTuber who loves indie horror, has started a series of videos that play into this found footage/news broadcast horror story, and for part of it, they used ai generated images of photographs of children to represent the victims of the monster. And they defended this by saying that it was better to use these generated images of children than actual real children. And I'm just sitting here confused by that. Because like, the model that that generative ai is trained on is using stolen images of real children to make those fake photos. So not only does it fall under using a child's image without consent, but you don't even know what children you've stolen the visage from. That is not a good look. The same goes for Indigo Park. AI was used for the opening footage of Issac Indigo introducing the park, and that's part of why his facial movements are so janky. Mason from UniqueGeese at least apologized and said he'd do better next time, but like...the chapter 1 revamp came out and that wasn't changed.

It's small stuff and big stuff, but either way, it's not okay. Until generative ai is trained only on data that is given to its developers consensually, it is not a viable tool for creation. It's not ready to be tested until the ethics part is worked out, and even then, I don't think I'd ever want to touch it. Like I get it, game development is hard, and in the indie scene, it's hard to make it all come together. But also, I expect a project built on passion to at least TRY to be creative in its solutions, and for the people making it to know better than to use stolen content. I expect better. Maybe I'm wrong for expecting better. But I expect better.

I'm just...disappointed. It makes me feel like I can't touch anything in modern media. Like I may as well go back and only play games, watch shows/movies, and explore stories made before 2023. At least then I can trust that it was probably done without the use of the theft machine. That's such a hopeless thing, giving up on modern art and all the potential it comes with. I don't want to give up on art. I don't want to give up on people telling meaningful stories in modern times. Please, humans, keep making art with your own two hands. Please give me something to be hopeful for.

[haroldosaur]

Reblog if you're absolutely fuckin' DONE with ai-generated media

[hatboyproject]

I have to consider my next moves very carefully, as Jennifer Hale has come out swinging on this issue and I really think there's room for it to be understood better. Currently, my intent is to continue development, unless and until I receive a specific request to stop. What I hope is that my perspective on this issue can be included and considered in the conversation going forward, and maybe affect some hearts and minds. What I now hope for is for my use case to be seen and heard, and then for me to be tactically ignored by VAs. To come out and say my project is OK would weaken their very necesssary arguments they're trying to make towards other avenues. So, I understand that even if any one of them thought my work specifically was fine, I'll never know that, now. All I can hope for is to be understood.

Last Valentine's Day I was showcasing the romance scene. This year, I'm trying desperately to justify why my romance mod, for one of the most romantic games ever, should be allowed to exist. Feelsbadman

[blackat-t7t]

Something that I worry might get lost in the AI discourse, specifically around AI voices:

If you as an individual have purchased an ebook and are using the text-to-speech function built into your ereader for accessibility-- this is not an AI audiobook.

It's more like asking a friend to read a book you own out loud to you. You bought a book, not an audiobook, and you're using it in a way that people have always used books. Everyone involved in the creation of the book got paid, and no one lost their job. You don't need to feel guilty for using an accessibility feature.

It's very different from a publisher choosing not to put a job on the market because they decided to have a machine do the job instead. And very different from a producer stealing a real voice actor's voice by recording them and making a custom robot voice** from it, thereby denying them future jobs.

You aren't "supporting AI in stealing jobs". Individual choices in how you use what you buy are entirely different from how an industry as a whole values or devalues the work of human beings.

**The same technology is also used by people with degenerative conditions that will eventually stop them from talking, so the communication devices they use then will "have their voice." These "AI voices" are not taking jobs and should be respected.

[thisisnothowidie]

Ik that probably none of you care and this is extremely self indulgent but i tried out that ai thing and even though its all over the place- well anyway sorry if im annying you by tagging but I wanted to share

@weird-an @stranger-rants @raven2008 @kiraixi @ihni

[fangirl-nadir]

On one hand it would be super thematic if Caine was voiced by AI.

On the other hand that kind of AI isn't very ethical and the creators deciding to use it would undermine the message of the show

[stra-tek]

A sadly unfinished Star Trek fan film from all the way back in 2014, using CG graphics and AI voices for the TOS cast.

[sheepishvagabond-shinigamijack]

Not a request, just a curious question - which AI do you use to make voices? I’ve always wanted to do something similar but I’ve never known the best software to use. Don’t worry, I won’t be stealing your thunder, this is purely for my own personal use 😆 Also, apologies if you’ve already answered this question!

I use ELVENLABS! It's very easy to use which is a godsend for my smol brain.

No worries about thunder stealing! I'm always just as hyped to hear what other people make! I shared a post about how I do it, but it needs a good overhaul since I've learnt a ton of tricks. Maybe I'll post an updated version soon! Anyhoo- HERE is a dropbox link to all the audio files I use, too! You can plug these right in and start making stuff! I've been meaning to share the link for a while so I'm taking this as a good sign to do so!

Good luck! Hope you have as much fun as I do! <3

(Oh and if y'all use it, consider taggin the fuck out of me maybe so I can share it?!)

[knackeredforever]

Ok this is probably gonna be a long rant but it’s for things that I’ve thought about for a while when it comes to the “ai” craze.

I’m ranting about what I’m ranting about is “ai” or what this hellhole of the modern internet has attributed the title “ai” to a fucked up form of machine learning that steals / plagiarises the work of others without their consent. For the rest of this rant I’ll be referring to “ai” as machine learning because that’s what it actually is algorithms programmed to copy others work.

The name “ai” is purely used to make the machine learning software sound more marketable and cool, artificial intelligence as most people envision it still doesn’t exist machine learning is basically constantly iterating program learning by being given fitness values that the outcome with the highest fitness value is used as a baseline for all the other runs to learn from. The machine learning does this by constantly taking over peoples work trying to use this work to guess what a prompt entered by a user wants in response and that’s why machine learning software would ask users whether they were satisfied by the outcome of the machine learning (I’ve used machine learning alot so I’ll shorten it to ml from now on) that will be the fitness value if the user enters yes that will give that ml outcome a higher fitness value therefore further uses of the ml software for that prompt of similar will give results similar to the high fitness value outcome.

One annoying outcome of the machine learning boom is because of its given name of “ai” when ai is used in the context outside of machine learning people now immediately assume it’s machine learning one example is video games which have used the term ai for decades e.g. enemy ai but now using that term makes people think it’s using machine learning even when it isn’t. One example I can think of was dragons dogma 2(I think? ) where developers were discussing the games new ai systems which journalists immediately assumed meant machine learning despite the fact it didn’t.

Another form of machine learning is the so called “ai voices” which is just taking audio sampling of people’s voices copying it and using it to try to say things those people didn’t originally say. It’s genuinely terrifying especially for people like voice actors who many have spoken out of the use of “ai voices” to replicate their voices who now have to worry about people using their voices to say offensive shit and people thinking it’s the original voice actor that said it. Another element that personally pisses me off is voice acting at an unprofessional level basically for shitposts to give an example my YouTube feed used to be filled with shitposts of people doing impressions of characters or performing the glorious task known as sentence mixing taking already existing audio and manually editing it to create new audio this is very different from machine learning as in machine learning new audio is created by trying to simulate copied audio samples from someone else. While in sentence mixing no new audio samples are created the audio is just edited to sound like something else is being said.

But now my YouTube feed when it comes to shitposts of this variety are usually filled with ai voice shitposts usually made by very small YouTubers but bigger ones also sometimes use it. This pisses me of for various reasons such that a lot of these videos that would have previously contained admirable amateur voice acting or sentence mixing now have bad incredibly flat machine learning voice acting and if your not willing to put the effort in the voice itself then I don’t think the video is probably gonna be very funny.

But another element that saddens me when thinking about this is the fact alot of people probably got into voice acting through doing shitposts online so the fact alot of people aren’t even trying to do these voices and that means they could have missed out on the realisation that they really liked voice acting and deciding they wanted to pursue it further.

“Ai”’s are machine learning plagiarism algorithm that are now forcing people online to be part of their sample size whether they want to or not social media’s are stealing artists work to replicate it worse for lazy people even fucking mspaint is doing this now MS FUCKING PAINT.

I’m sure there might be some good uses for this type of software but so far the main people who use and advocate it are corporations trying to get out of paying people for their art and lazy people.

What proves to me on a personal level that machine learning is used for nothing more than laziness is that in my computer science class we are almost finished with a long individual project and it’s one that I mostly really enjoyed working on my own game which was the good part. The worst part was every fucking computer science lesson where I had to hear other students talk about ways they could use machine learning to do their work for them so that they don’t have to do anything themselves no one cared about actually making something, something they wanted to make. All they wanted was something easy and I have known a lot of these people for years I’ve overheard their conversations most of them do business studies and when it comes to talking about their passions when I overhear them it’s always what job will get them the most money what can they do to make girls to be with them for their money. It won’t surprise you that most of these guys watch videos in computer science lessons on ways to be alpha males. (Unfortunately my computer science class is only guys) so I know machine learning isn’t a tool to help artists it’s a tool for people to bypass the art creation process due to laziness.

Now a second personal anecdote so about a month ago I went to a university open day with my dad for a game development course as that’s the career I want to pursue without getting into personal details my dad doesn’t exactly want me to go to this uni or course he debated me on several points about wanting to go to this uni and I argued why I wanted to go their but then he said that he had problems with me wanting to do game development because “the entire industry will mostly be ai generated in a few years anyway” my dads job has nothing to do with game development in the slightest he made this assumption probably because of news stories saying how machine learning was the future of all industries and that all jobs in those fields will disappear.

And honestly I’ve never heard a statement in my life that made me want to pursue game development more.

I want to pursue game development to create games by my own hands to have something that is truly my own not for money but for the love of creating games I wanna make.

I refuse to let all art become nothing more than having stolen slop fired back at users written inputs because if someone didn’t create it what is the point of art at all.

Art is human expression and machine learning is an attempt to replicate the human expression but it will never win.

That’s why I don’t want to support the use of machine learning online wherever I can because it goes against everything I stand for even if it means criticising something I like for using it as I want to support art not stolen non consensual machine learning.

I’m sorry for the long rant but this is a collection of things that have annoyed me for a while.

[bit-b]

The TTS Brian video is now out! Who's the voice behind one of the most commonly used TTS voices in streaming?

Hope you all enjoy!

[animentality]

[thesoulspulse]

No More Uberduck

Well it was fun while it lasted, but this is probably for the best given all the AI drama still going on that’s been disrupting the livelihood of many talented artists, voice actors, singers, writers, and actors in the film industry. We should definitely support the work of real people as much as we can because sadly, like any tool, technology can always be abused if used the wrong way. Don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed being able to imagine Danny or Vlad saying certain lines of dialogue, however, we should always remember it was the voice actors who played them back in the day that brought these amazing characters to life in the first place.

Without them, none of these characters would exist let alone have a voice. Literally!

So yeah, just a heads up the policy has changed for uberduck which means the fan uploaded character voices are no longer available for public use. You can read that here: https://uberduck.ai/blog/new-voice-hosting-policy Thankfully I don’t have to take down or delete any of the audio clips I’ve already shared on tumblr which means you’re free to check them out for a bit of nostalgia. And on one final note, I think we all probably know who to blame for AI trying to take over the world right now am I right? This whole mess screams Technus!

[safewarmbubbly]

My guildmate used the 11.ai voice thing to make Trahearne say this (personally a new short story might be in the works because of this fjfj). This was my favourite of the two he sent.

The cadence is a little off, but ai voices are still a little wonk.

Hope everyone enjoys this slightly cursed content <3

[saspitite]

above all else i hate how ai has made it normal for people to just use ai generated voices for their skits. like. no. that is not how you do it. back in my day, we meticulously took numerous clips of someone speaking and edited them all together so they formed a new sentence. that was the true way. ai has ruined the experience. the days of YTP editing techniques are truly gone

[lorriiraine]

„Hurt“ - Sebastian Sallow ai song cover Preview (full version in the link)

Original: Hurt - Johnny Cash