A partnership with OpenAI will let podcasters replicate their voices to automatically create foreign-language versions of their shows.
Ah. So now people can listen to Joe Rogan in the original Russian.
That’s just weird… Part of the reason I listen to podcasts is that I just enjoy people talking about things and AI voices still have this uncanny quality to me
Point taken, well done.
It won’t take long until that uncanny quality is worked out.
Imho it has already been worked out. There is probably selection bias at play as you don’t even recognize the AI voices that are already there.
Following up on the other comment.
The issue is that widely available speech models are not yet offering the quality that is technically possible. That is probably why you think we’re not there yet. But we are.
Oh, I’m looking forward to just translate a whole audiobook into my native language and any speaking style I like.
Okay, perhaps we would still have difficulties with made up fantasy words or words from foreign languages with little training data.
Mind, this is already possible. It’s just that I don’t have access to this technology. I sincerely hope that there will be no gatekeeping to the training data, such that we can train such models ourselves.
The problem with this is the same problem news websites has when they started switching out their foreign language writers with AI.
Just because you can translate what is literally being said word by word, doesn’t mean you’re translating the intent of what was being said.
Idioms, phrases, jokes, pleasantries, etc. won’t translate into foreign languages no matter how well you can translate the literal words being said.
If you want good quality translation, you should get someone who knows the language and the culture to do it, as they can translate what’s between the lines.
Shows with the budget/intent to create good quality translations will have them reviewed/refined by humans before they put it back in the voice of the host, I don’t see why they couldn’t do that.
Shows without the budget or that just don’t care will use full-auto and I’m sure it will indeed suck.
I honestly think this a non-issue with the new llms coming out. Gpt 4 definitely understands idioms.
Hardest part with be getting the tone down and adding proper emotion to it.
Honestly, I agree. Machine translation isn’t by necessity limited to “literal” translations anymore.
There’s probably a strong English bias to that currently, but other languages will come with time
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I’m with the person in this thread that pointed out that, with this, instead of translators handling an impossible amount of work, now they can edit the output to match correctly and get more done.
Fighting the tech will fail, as history has shown. Integrating it in a healthy, useful way is what is needed.
Make it stop.
Fuck this whole shit.
What’s your beef with this?
In what world does someone who only speaks Spanish being able to listen to and enjoy a podcast that was recorded in English end up being such a terrible thing?
“Broader accessibility of information? No, please make it stop!!”
You could argue that for major languages, where the translations would drive revenue, they should prefer to hire people to do the translations from within the target market - it would create some amount of economic opportunity rather than just being another way for the developed countries to suck up money on services from developing ones in particular.
But that would be just translating the transcript. To make it comparable to what Spotify is planning is if it also contains hiring voice actors to essentially redo the entire podcast in a different language.
No offense but depending on the podcast and the target audience this solution could cost per episode more than the entire production cost of the podcast per episode.
Yeah, I could imagine that, if we’re just counting the baseline minimum of what that production would cost. I think for the most popular podcasts they could easily afford it, though. It would certainly cost much less than what they’re paying Joe Rogan.
My beef with this, is that Spotify is relentless with pushing podcasts. I’m not interested in podcasts. I just want them permanently gone from my Spotify for all of eternity, but alas, I can’t get rid of them. When they start pumping out AI generated translations of popular podcasts, I can’t even imagine how hard they’ll push it.
I can choose “Music” and “Podcasts & Shows” on Home page on the mobile app at least, but that changes the feed massively and makes it useless. Spotify is such a trash app already, and I’m just waiting for an alternative that works in my country, but alas…
We are one step closer to universal translation.
“Not in my lifetime, by choice.”
This pseudoAI is a new kind of plastic: sometimes useful, misused to infest everything with it. As it rolls, there would be less and less genuine content in a sea of garbage. That few, it’d become a luxury.
Technological advance is in hands of those who own the means of production.
After discovering my first AI covers (specifically Barbie Girl by Johnny Cash) a couple of weeks ago my first thought was “Yep, this is how Star Trek’s universal translator is about to come to pass.”
Thanks to AI, I guess Michael Jackson isn’t dead after all…
That’s going to cause so many lawsuits. Also wonder since the WAG strike finally finished and are creating a contract, if this will affect it?
Why do you think that? It sounds like it’s a feature that a Podcaster can choose to use if they want to. It doesn’t sound like they are just going to do it to every podcast without permission.
Honestly, as dumb as the AI hype can be, I see this as an actual good use of the tech, but I could be wrong.
Sure, as long as everyone gets paid!
Well they get more people listen to their podcast, more advertising.
Yes exactly, as long as that adds up to the same compensation percentage the original voice actor signed up for then I don’t see an issue with this.
I’m almost 100% sure that won’t be the case without a fight
Just send Joe Rogan to strong arm them or talk about dmt until they give in.
Is this good or bad. I can see this being used to steal your voice and use it without your permission.
Assuming that nothing nefarious happens, I can still see this being a problem if the translations aren’t top quality. Imagine that speakers of another language are offended or you’re embarrassed in front of them because something you said was incorrectly translated; then it’s rendered in your voice so it seems you said it.
Handle it just like horror podcasts usually do. Disclaimers before and after the podcast. Disclaimers in the podcast description. Notices in the ToS.
“This podcast has been translated into *your language* with the help of OpenAI. This is an automated service. As such, it may contain transcription and translation errors which may result in dialogue not intended by the original podcaster. Please report errors to *support link here*.”
Be more concerned about this being like what Hollywood just pulled, where Spotify includes a usage clause that gives them the rights to the podcaster’s voice in perpetuity.
And, it doesn’t even need to be wrong. Sometimes very innocent things have a specific meaning or connotation in certain languages. Be it innuendos or euphemisms.
Using 3/5 in connection with Black people would mean basically nothing in Germany, but would perk up ears in the USA. On the other hand 18 and 88 is not that well known in the USA as anything particular, but in Germany you can’t have it easily on your car plate, especially if you’re from Hamburg (HH).
So you could quite correctly translate things, but they still get a different connotation depending on culture and language.
It would help with accessibility, and it might help protect some lesser spoken languages because those people can grow an audience as well.
The tech will develop regardless and people will abuse it for other means, at least this one feels like a positive use as opposed to say, a company making its own podcast series with a stolen voice.
If the creator can choose to generate other languages for their own voice, that’s probably fine?
In the short term, AI is only trained on popular languages like Spanish. It will not help less common ones.
Nope. I don’t support blatantly public facing AI’s that take creative jobs away from people. I don’t care if it’s opt-in. I don’t care if the podcast creator themselves activates it. Exploiting the technology will only make it normalized, meaning we’ll care less about allowing humans to be creative in the future.
It seems easy to take this position as a native English speaker, but what if you aren’t proficient in English, perhaps only in a smaller regional language that doesn’t have the same nearly infinite pool of content? This is a potential game changer for that, allowing you to listen to thousands of podcasts you never could before. No jobs were lost because there was never anyone doing the translations in the first place. When viewed this way, it’s an accessibility feature.
What?
Ronald would like me to tell you that Seamus told him that Dean was told by Parvati that Hagrid’s looking for you.
I agree but it’s inevitable.
“A partnership with OpenAI”. I stopped reading. Probably shouldn’t but god damn.
I saw nothing in the article about if the podcasters will be getting any pay or anything of the sorts for this kind of stuff, but so long as they’re getting paid for opting in (assuming it’s opt in) when this comes available for everyone I don’t mind this as much. This is a use of AI I can get behind, at least if the podcasters get paid while using it.
Henry Zebrowski in Spanish is going to be something else.
Sounds like a terrible idea
Why?
All my years learning English wasted.
/s
If the podcast creator consents, what’s the problem? I don’t understand why anti-AI sentiment is so prevalent among some people.
Its between the “it might take away jobs” to “spotify might use podcasters voices without consent”. I’m more on the latter but thats as if Spotify would end up being the “only” podcast streaming platform.
