He wrote it through gritted teeth, but he’s not really wrong.
This topic obviously irritates me, mostly because copyright doesn’t go away just because something is online, and you need to pay for the stuff you use unless the owner of it absolves you from that obligation. It absolutely does not help, though, that far too many of the self-appointed spokesmen for AI don’t know how to have a conversation without starting a blood feud. That skill seems to be notable by its general absence, in fact.
Which is a problem, as you kind of need that skill when you’re trying to convince people to give up their property rights.
Moe Lane
I think that’s simply a function of the self-appointed spokesmen selling dreams to suckers.
(Shrug) I’d roll my eyes a lot less about this whole kerfluffle between the prophets of The Singularity(tm) and the doomsayers of TEOTWAWKI if either side had a greater attachment to reality.
(Although I’m torqued that Google and Bing are now worse than AltaVista and Gopher ever were.)
It’s not enough for the proponents to say “this is a useful tool in limited circumstances”. They’re selling a panacea to people who want to believe.
It’s not enough for the opponents to argue that lots of these databases are being “trained” with pirated IP. They’re crusading against an unnatural abomination.
(Shrug) MidJourney has value. It automates a lot of things that were previously a PITA for digital artists. It’s not ever going to remove the need for digital artists, but it makes becoming a digital artist much more accessible.
ChatGPT? As far as I can tell, it has no purpose beyond pumping propaganda into Social Media through botnets.
Some of the audio applications are downright amazing. Whether it’s Presidents playing Deep Rock Galactic, or Neuro-sama singing Sabaton covers.
The audio applications are absolutely going to survive; apparently, the uncanny valley is visual-only. If I was advising video game voice actors, I’d tell them to lock in getting residuals for any reproduction of their voice while they still can, even if it means taking a hit in the short term. The important thing needs to be setting the precedent first.
Remember, there’s an entire generation who grew up with autotune as default. To them, Maroon 5 sounds “normal”, and records before the late ‘90s sound “weird”.
Vocal tracks have been doubled and second track distorted as a regular thing since disco was alive.
Audio artifacts aren’t undetectable, they’re just omnipresent.
Here’s a fun example of where audio editing is, the original audio is of a VTuber reading “Fox in Socks” (badly). A hobbyist turned it into this: https://youtu.be/_-u0c7jmpqg?si=fS2As085O96viKsR
The visual tools are stronger than you give them credit for. Take the recent World War documentaries. The footage they use was filmed in black & white, at a different ratio, on handcranked cameras, without gimbals. But after the conversions it’s difficult to see the seams.