And of course, its all 4chans fault
this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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Account restoration or not, this is proof that we should hurry up and get to the point where voice modeling doesn't need to be done 'in the cloud.'
Yes the technology can be misused. However there are a variety of instances where someone needs to have a voice to hand.
Trouble is it's more profitable for these companies to pay per use and you can't charge for using something that's completely working on the client's machine.
To me the main takeaway is that Americans are fucking prudes and it's causing real harm.
We already do.
Its stupid easy, in fact.
Like. Total time of actual configuration for replacing all the faces and voices in the Empire Strikes back with my face and my voice was like 3 hours.
Okay, consider my interest entirely piqued. How does it feel watching something like that? You seem like the kind of guy to go have a beer with. That’s a total mad lad move, I would watch something like that in a heartbeat, drop work and all, just go enjoy this absurd result of a gem the universe has bestowed upon us. Even better if it was me in there, not some internet genius I don’t know, but I kind of need to see Empire Strikes back but everyone’s the same guy and sounds the same now
Happy to share google drive link to you priv1ately if you'd like.
And then she got an apology and got her account reinstated by ElevenLabs.
The harm was already done
Does that mean that you consider the temporary loss of her voice the same harm as if she would've lost access permanently?
Do keep in mind I do not believe the banning to be ok either - but I'd rather have a company where the human factor sometimes fails that can properly undo their mistake and apologize than something like Meta where you cannot even get in touch with a human if something gets flagged.
The extreme of a company that never does a mistake would of course be the best but that's never going to happen.
I hope for the self hosted solution that @[email protected] mentioned to become reality, both for people like Joyce and because it would be a step towards self hosted voice assistants for those of us that refuse to use cloud based ones.
When I first asked Sophia Noel, a company representative, about the incident, she directed me to the company’s prohibited use policy.
There are rules against threatening child safety, engaging in illegal behavior, providing medical advice, impersonating others, interfering with elections, and more.
But there’s nothing specifically about inappropriate language. I asked Noel about this, and she said that Joyce’s remark was most likely interpreted as a threat.
[...]
Joyce doesn’t hold a grudge—and her experience is far from universal.
Jules uses the same technology, but he hasn’t received any warnings about his language—even though a comedy routine he performs using his voice clone contains plenty of curse words, says his wife, Maria.
He opened a recent set by yelling “Fuck you guys!” at the audience—his way of ensuring they don’t give him any pity laughs, he joked.
That comedy set is even promoted on the ElevenLabs website.Blank says language like that used by Joyce is no longer restricted.
“There is no specific swear ban that I know of,” says Noel.
That’s just as well.
The harm this time is indeed less, but the potential for harm is still the same as Meta. There is always the temptation to use power over your SAS users for your own gain. Maybe one day they're a bigger company who think 'you know what, maybe it's better for the company that our users not swear'. Either way lets hope for libre, self-hosted alternatives.
That they eventually had humans in the loop is great.
I just don't like cloud based solutions when it's something as simple as being able to speak and not sound like stephen hawkings or microsoft sam. Plus in a cloud based 'solution' they can always keep transcripts.