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submitted 5 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 242 points 5 months ago

The moment word was that Reddit (and now Stackoverflow) were tightening APIs to then sell our conversations to AI was when the game was given away. And I'm sure there were moments or clues before that.

This was when the "you're the product if its free" arrangement metastasised into "you're a data farming serf for a feudal digital overlord whether you pay or not".

Google search transitioning from Good search engine for the internet -> Bad search engine serving SEO crap and ads -> Just use our AI and forget about the internet is more of the same. That their search engine is dominated by SEO and Ads is part of it ... the internet, IE other people's content isn't valuable any more, not with any sovereignty or dignity, least of all the kind envisioned in the ideals of the internet.

The goal now is to be the new internet, where you can bet your ass that there will not be any Tim Berners-Lee open sourcing this. Instead, the internet that we all made is now a feudal landscape on which we all technically "live" and in which we all technically produce content, but which is now all owned, governed and consumed by big tech for their own profits.


I recall back around the start of YouTube, which IIRC was the first hype moment for the internet after the dotcom crash, there was talk about what structures would emerge on the internet ... whether new structures would be created or whether older economic structures would impose themselves and colonise the space. I wasn't thinking too hard at the time, but it seemed intuitive to that older structures would at least try very hard to impose themselves.

But I never thought anything like this would happen. That the cloud, search/google, mega platforms and AI would swallow the whole thing up.

[-] classic@fedia.io 46 points 5 months ago

Well that's a happy note on which to end this day

(Well written though, thank you)

[-] erwan@lemmy.ml 27 points 5 months ago

Especially coming from Google, who was one of the good guys pushing open standards and interoperability.

[-] lanolinoil@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

We ruined the world by painting certain men or groups as bad. The centralization of power is the bad thing. That's the whole purpose of all Republics as I understand it. Something we used to know and have almost completely forgotten

[-] gh0stcassette 9 points 5 months ago

Eh, open-sourcing is just good business, the only reason every big tech company doesn't is that loads of executives are stuck in the past. Of course having random people on the internet do labor for you for free is something Google would want. They get the advantage of tens of thousands of extra eyes on their code pointing out potential security vulnerabilities and they can just put all the really shady shit in proprietary blobs like Google Play Services, they're getting the best of both worlds as far as they're concerned.

Large publicly-traded companies do not do anything for the good of anyone but themselves, they are literally Legally Obligated to make the most profitable decisions for themselves at all times. If they're open-sourcing things it's to make money, not because they were "good guys".

[-] Hoxton@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago

Well said! I’m still wondering what happens when the enviable ouroboros of AI content referencing AI content referencing AI content makes the whole internet a self perpetuating mess of unreadable content and makes anything of value these companies once gained basically useless.

Would that eventually result in fresh, actual human created content only coming from social media? I guess clauses about using your likeness will be popping up in TikTok at some point (if they aren’t already)

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I dunno, my feeling is that even if the hype dies down we’re not going back. Like a real transition has happened just like when Facebook took off.

Humans will still be in the loop through their prompts and various other bits and pieces and platforms (Reddit is still huge) … while we may just adjust to the new standard in the same way that many reported an inability to do deep reading after becoming regular internet users.

[-] gh0stcassette 7 points 5 months ago

I think it'll end up like Facebook (the social media platform, not the company). Eventually you'll hit model collapse for new models trained off uncurated internet data once a critical portion of all online posts are made by AI, and it'll become Much more expensive to create quality, up-to-date datasets for new models. Older/less tech literate people will stay on the big, AI-dominated platforms getting their brains melted by increasingly compelling, individually-tailored AI propaganda and everyone else will move to newer, less enshittified platforms until the cycle repeats.

Maybe we'll see an increase in discord/matrix style chatroom type social media, since it's easier to curate those and be relatively confident everyone in a particular server is human. I also think most current fediverse platforms are also marginally more resistant to AI bots because individual servers can have an application process that verifies your humanity, and then defederate from instances that don't do that.

Basically anything that can segment the Unceasing Firehose of traffic on the big social media platforms into smaller chunks that can be more effectively moderated, ideally by volunteers because a large tech company would probably just automate moderation and then you're back at square 1.

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[-] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

It should end up self regulating once AI is using AI material. That's the downfall of the companies not bothering to put very clear identification of AI produced material. It'll spiral into a hilarious mess.

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[-] elias_griffin@lemmy.world 82 points 5 months ago

Quote from the subtitle of the article

and you can’t stop it.

Don't ever let life-deprived, perspective-bubble wearing, uncompassiontate, power hungry manipulators, "News" people, tell you what you can and cannot do. Doesn't even pass the smell test.

My advice, if a Media Outlet tries to Groom you to think that nothing you do matters, don't ever read it again.

[-] logos@sh.itjust.works 17 points 5 months ago

Closed it as soon as I saw the paywall anyway

[-] fukurthumz420@lemmy.world 16 points 5 months ago

god, i love this statement. it's so true. people have to understand our collective power. even if the only tool we have is a hammer, we can still beat their doors down and crush them with it. all it takes is organization and willingness.

[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 8 points 5 months ago

The implication being that this is the deal that the AI boom is offering, it's not necessarily an endorsement of that philosophy by the writer.

[-] elias_griffin@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

I don't care what the implication was, I didn't read past the slight/insult to my character, morality and intelligence. Who is some MSM empty suit tank to play cognitive narrative shaping with me, absolutely zero.

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[-] fukurthumz420@lemmy.world 68 points 5 months ago

our collective time would be better spent destroying capitalism than trying to stop AI. AI is wonderful in the right social system.

[-] jj4211@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago

On the other hand, assuming the social system isn't the right one, hypothetically AI fully realized could make it more unreasonable and more tightly stuck the way it is.

[-] TheFriar@lemm.ee 7 points 5 months ago

Not to mention, any other, more just social system wouldn’t be fucking decimating the environment, ultimately hurting the poorer nations first, for money. And AI is accelerating our CO2 output when we need to be drastically cutting it back. This is very much a pacifying tool as we barrel toward oblivion.

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[-] pixxelkick@lemmy.world 65 points 5 months ago

I mean, that's just how it has always worked, this isn't actually special to AI.

Tom Hanks does the voice for Woody in Toy Story movies, but, his brother Jim Hanks has a very similar voice, but since he isnt Tom Hanks he commands a lower salary.

So many video games and whatnot use Jim's voice for Woody instead to save a bunch of money, and/or because Tom is typically busy filming movies.

This isn't an abnormal situation, voice actors constantly have "sound alikes" that impersonate them and get paid literally because they sound similar.

OpenAI clearly did this.

It's hilarious because normally fans are foaming at the mouth if a studio hires a new actor and they sound even a little bit different than the prior actor, and no one bats an eye at studios efforts to try really hard to find a new actor that sounds as close as possible.

Scarlett declined the offer and now she's malding that OpenAI went and found some other woman who sounds similar.

Thems the breaks, that's an incredibly common thing that happens in voice acting across the board in video games, tv shows, movies, you name it.

OpenAI almost certainly would have won the court case if they were able to produce who they actually hired and said person could demo that their voice sounds the same as Gippity's.

If they did that, Scarlett wouldn't have a leg to stand on in court, she cant sue someone for having a similar voice to her, lol.

[-] xhieron@lemmy.world 57 points 5 months ago

She sure can't. Sounds like all OpenAI has to do is produce the voice actor they used.

So where is she? ...

Right.

[-] dwindling7373@feddit.it 25 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yes but also no, the whole appeal is tied to her brand (her public image x the character HER), unlike Woody who is an original creation.

It's like doing a commercial using a lookalike dressed like the original guy and pretending that's a completely different actor.

[-] Chee_Koala@lemmy.world 12 points 5 months ago

I get that she is grappling with identity and it's not a clear cut case, but if the precedent is set that similar voices (and I didn't even think it was that similar in this case) are infringement, that would be a pretty big blow to commercial creativity projects.

Maybe it's more a brand problem than an infringement problem.

[-] Glowstick@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I agreed with op, then i read your astute response and now I don't know which position is correct.

Thinking it through as i type... If you photoshopped an image of Tom Hanks giving a thumbs up to your product, that would clearly be illegal, but if you hired an exact flawless lookalike impersonator of Tom Hanks and had him pose for a picture with a thumbs up to your product, would that be illegal? I think it might still be illegal, because you purposely hired a lookalike impersonator to gain the benefit of Tom Hanks' brand.

I think the law on AI should match what the law says about impersonators. If hiring an indistinguishable celebrity impersonator to use in media is legal, then ai soundalikes should be legal too, and vice versa.

[-] lanolinoil@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

when you get into these nitty gritty copyright/ip arguments you realize it's all just a house of cards to make capital king and the main ism

[-] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

I think what it comes down to is intention. Are you intending to mimic someone else's likeness without that person's permission? That's wrong. But if you just like someone's voice and want to use them, and they happen to have a similar likeness, that's fine.

Where OpenAI gloriously fucked up is asking Johansson first. If they hadn't, they would have plausible deniability that they just liked the voice actor's voice. If it reminds them of Johansson, that's even fine. What's wrong is that they specifically wanted her likeness, even after she turned them down.

[-] catloaf@lemm.ee 14 points 5 months ago

The difference is that apparently they asked ScarJo first and she said no. When they ask Tom Hanks (or really his agent, I assume) the answer is "he's too busy with movies, try Jim".

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[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 10 points 5 months ago

Well, in the "soundalike" situation you describe people were getting paid to voice things. Now it's just an AI model that's not getting paid and the people that made the model probably got paid even less than a soundalike voice actor would. It's just more money going to the top.

[-] athairmor@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Scarlett actually would have a good case if she can show the court that people think it’s her. Tom Waits won a case against Frito Lay for “voice misappropriation” when they had someone imitate his voice for a commercial.

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[-] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 58 points 5 months ago

"We need you to reconsider... because we already did it and we're just looking for your stamp of approval after the fact."

[-] authorinthedark@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 5 months ago

asking for forgiveness rather than permission sorta just seems to be their policy these days, yeah?

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[-] Alpha71@lemmy.world 36 points 5 months ago

"Yeah, let's go up against the woman who sued Disney and won What could go wrong!?"

[-] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 30 points 5 months ago
[-] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 27 points 5 months ago

The Johansson scandal is merely a reminder of AI’s manifest-destiny philosophy: This is happening, whether you like it or not.

It’s just so fitting that microsoft is the company most fervently wallowing in it.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago

I hate that I have to keep saying this- No one seems to be talking about the fact that by giving their AI a human-like voice with simulated emotions, it inherently makes it seem more trustworthy and will get more people to believe its hallucinations are true. And then there will be the people convinced it's really alive. This is fucking dangerous.

[-] VerticaGG 5 points 5 months ago
[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

I plan to. It really upsets me.

[-] suction@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago

It’s still just LLM and therefore just autocomplete

[-] MojoMcJojo@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Some days I'm just an autocomplete

[-] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago

This article is about their voice synthesis product, which works in tandem with their GPT LLMs, but isn't itself an LLM.

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[-] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 12 points 5 months ago
[-] Rolando@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

OpenAI should have given some money to the people who own the movie "Her". Then they could have claimed they were just mimicking the character.

[-] CitizenKong@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago

It doesn't work like that. It will soon if Disney has their way, with actors selling away their likeness rights for perpetuity with their contracts.

[-] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

What do you think the actor's strike was about? And what do you think one of the key agreements the actors wrung out of the studios was? They were not about to allow their likenesses to be sold for all of eternity for pennies on the dollar.

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[-] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Doesn't sound anything like Scarlett Johansson

[-] k_rol@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Well it does have some resemblance but other people have voices like her. Are they not allowed to use their voice anymore?

Edit: I guess not

I wish Altman would read Accelerando.

[-] BertramDitore@lemmy.world 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Knowing people like him, he would probably take the obvious literary warnings from a book like that and use them as inspiration for how to build an even more dystopian nightmare.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 9 points 5 months ago

Which this very story proves. The AI voice that they generated was specifically based on "Her", a movie about a guy who falls in love with an AI voice assistant. I haven't seen the movie, but I'm going out on a limb to guess this is another "don't make the torment vortex" situation.

[-] aesthelete@lemmy.world 9 points 5 months ago

The movie is actually pretty non-dystopian and kind of sweet. It's basically a romcom, just one with a very creative premise.

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this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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