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Radio host David Greene says Google's NotebookLM tool stole his voice

91 points • by mikhael • yesterday at 6:05 PM • 61 comments • view on HN

https://archive.ph/p81wc

Comments

tantalor • yesterday at 10:27 PM

Compare for yourself.

David Greene: https://youtu.be/xYxQrLp4MQk

NotebookLM: https://youtu.be/AR4dRtzFvxM

I think he just has "podcast guy" voice. It's pretty generic.

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teekert • yesterday at 9:48 PM

I listen to some Jupiter Broadcasting podcasts. The main host (Chris Fisher) regularly pops up in NotebookLLM content, with his voice. Sometimes it just jumps in, and then after some time out again. It’s usually a pretty perfect imitation, I can’t hear the difference .

Edit, here an older piece, there have been many since: [0], it’s the 3rd voice that enters the NotebookLLM clip so it takes a minute before it comes in (shared this clip here late 2024 [1]).

[0] https://podverse.fm/clip/Vy4y7ZG2Rd

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=NotebookLM%20Copied%20a%20Podc...

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prodigycorp • yesterday at 9:47 PM

I always thought the female voice sounded eerily similar to Tracy Alloway.

dpe82 • yesterday at 9:44 PM

Also available on msn.com sans paywall: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/he-spent-decades-perfectin...

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j-bos • yesterday at 10:01 PM

At a certain point with generative AI we're going to run out of voices and faces the same way we run out of domain names and trademarks.

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barbazoo • yesterday at 9:47 PM

> Greene felt the male voice sounded just like him

Turns out he still has his own voice, that one sounds like him.

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johnwheeler • yesterday at 9:44 PM

His voice doesn't sound that distinctive to me. He's going to have a hard time unless he can find some emails that say, use David Green's voice.

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bethekidyouwant • yesterday at 11:03 PM

If someone is born with David Attenborough‘s exact voice… what happens?

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lysace • yesterday at 9:43 PM

Echoes of when Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of stealing her voice. That time it was impossible to tell who was in the right - there was no available recording of OpenAI's supposed Scarlett clone - they had pulled it immediately for fear of bad PR.

Then came the completely nonsensical HN threads with people arguing about something they hadn't heard.

Maybe don't redo that whole thing? Could we at least make sure to secure some examples of A and B, this time?

--

Statement from Scarlett Johansson on the OpenAI "Sky" voice (May 20, 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40421225 (1021 comments)

OpenAI didn’t copy Scarlett Johansson’s voice for ChatGPT, records show (May 23, 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40448045 (1218 comments)

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