Want to hear our beloved David Attenborough narrate your life? Thanks to the power of machine learning, you can
(2020/08/17)
- Reference: 1597658770
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/17/in_brief_ai/
- Source link:
In brief A tech savvy Reddit dweller has trained a machine-learning model to mimic David Attenborough’s world-famous plummy voice.
The award-winning 94-year-old British naturalist is well-known for narrating nature documentaries. Now the UK national treasure's voice has been taken on a joyride to read Reddit comments, rather than describe the feeding behavior of whales, or the politics within of a cackle of hyenas.
Software programmer Garett MacGowan trained the AI model from audio samples of Attenborough, taken from TV clips on YouTube, Vice [1]reported . The results aren’t bad; there’s definitely an Attenborough-esque quality to it though there’s a slight tinny sound that gives it away as being computer-generated.
You can listen for yourself below – posts to Reddit's relationship and life advice message boards are automatically narrated by the Attenborough-bot [2]here .
[3]Youtube Video
Clearview argues that face scraping is free speech
The controversial facial-recognition-for-cops startup Clearview has hired one of the best experts in US constitutional law to defend itself against multiple class-action lawsuits.
Floyd Abrams will argue that scraping billions of photos from people’s public social media profiles to train a massive face-recognizing database is acceptable and protected under the First Amendment, the NYT [4]first reported . America's [5]Constitution protects the rights to free speech and expression.
Clearview’s other lawyer [6]Tor Ekeland , and CEO [7]Hoan Ton-that have also made similar arguments before. They both argued that people’s selfies posted on the internet counts as public information. Revoking access to public information violates the company's First Amendment rights, they previously insisted.
Google built an ML-based app to help visually impaired people
Android phone app [8]Lookout assists people with low-vision or blindness with tasks like buying food in supermarkets and reading mail.
The app, built by Google, uses computer vision algorithms to identify common food items by inspecting the packaging, and reads the labels out loud. Lookout can also scan barcodes. When it comes to paying for the groceries, it has a feature to help people find the right bank notes to hand to a cashier.
The software is trained on about two million products, Google said. There are two other modes in the app that scans the text on documents, like letters or pages of a book, to be recited. You can read more about the technical details [9]here . ®
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[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4ay5bn/relationships-subreddit-read-by-ai-generated-david-attenborough-voice
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8yoUfev19rjQahvu9Gtx5A/videos
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGAH6nLknNA
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/technology/clearview-floyd-abrams.html
[5] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/28/clearview_aclu_lawsuit/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/05/clearviewai_cease_desist/
[8] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.accessibility.reveal
[9] https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/07/on-device-supermarket-product.html
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The award-winning 94-year-old British naturalist is well-known for narrating nature documentaries. Now the UK national treasure's voice has been taken on a joyride to read Reddit comments, rather than describe the feeding behavior of whales, or the politics within of a cackle of hyenas.
Software programmer Garett MacGowan trained the AI model from audio samples of Attenborough, taken from TV clips on YouTube, Vice [1]reported . The results aren’t bad; there’s definitely an Attenborough-esque quality to it though there’s a slight tinny sound that gives it away as being computer-generated.
You can listen for yourself below – posts to Reddit's relationship and life advice message boards are automatically narrated by the Attenborough-bot [2]here .
[3]Youtube Video
Clearview argues that face scraping is free speech
The controversial facial-recognition-for-cops startup Clearview has hired one of the best experts in US constitutional law to defend itself against multiple class-action lawsuits.
Floyd Abrams will argue that scraping billions of photos from people’s public social media profiles to train a massive face-recognizing database is acceptable and protected under the First Amendment, the NYT [4]first reported . America's [5]Constitution protects the rights to free speech and expression.
Clearview’s other lawyer [6]Tor Ekeland , and CEO [7]Hoan Ton-that have also made similar arguments before. They both argued that people’s selfies posted on the internet counts as public information. Revoking access to public information violates the company's First Amendment rights, they previously insisted.
Google built an ML-based app to help visually impaired people
Android phone app [8]Lookout assists people with low-vision or blindness with tasks like buying food in supermarkets and reading mail.
The app, built by Google, uses computer vision algorithms to identify common food items by inspecting the packaging, and reads the labels out loud. Lookout can also scan barcodes. When it comes to paying for the groceries, it has a feature to help people find the right bank notes to hand to a cashier.
The software is trained on about two million products, Google said. There are two other modes in the app that scans the text on documents, like letters or pages of a book, to be recited. You can read more about the technical details [9]here . ®
Get our [10]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4ay5bn/relationships-subreddit-read-by-ai-generated-david-attenborough-voice
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8yoUfev19rjQahvu9Gtx5A/videos
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGAH6nLknNA
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/11/technology/clearview-floyd-abrams.html
[5] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/28/clearview_aclu_lawsuit/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/05/clearviewai_cease_desist/
[8] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.accessibility.reveal
[9] https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/07/on-device-supermarket-product.html
[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Paul Herber
'slight tinny sound'
I think it needs a more woody sound. Attenborough, now there's a good woody word!
Teiwaz
I think it needs a more woody sound.
Gorn!!
Nostalgia trip
Jonathan Richards 1
>When it comes to paying for the groceries, [the app] has a feature to help people find the right bank notes to hand to a cashier.
Ahh, I remember when you could reach into a wallet and pay for goods by handing over an intricately-fabricated slip of polymer material. Back in those days, the checkout operator would not recoil as if offered to have a fondle of Cleopatra's asp.
In my supermarket, even the automated checkouts won't accept banknotes.
Attenborough
One day soon, someone will work out how to put noise into the gaps between words/phrases that matches the noise generated when the robot speaks. I reckon those silences are one of the biggest giveaways at present.
But it's a bloody good impersonation, bar one or two odd pronunciations.