> Of the 11 positive applications that you listed, only the 1st, 3rd, 11th and arguably the 4th would benefit from voice cloning, which is what's being promoted here. The rest are solved merely by (improved) TTS and do not require the cloning of any actual human voice.
2, 5, 6, 9: It's true that in theory all you need is some way to capture the characteristics of a desired voice, but voice-cloning methods are the way to do this currently. If you want a voice assistant with a native accent, you fine-tune on the voice of a native speaker - opposed to turning a bunch of dials manually.
7, 8, 10: Here I think there is benefit specifically from sounding like a particular person. The dynamically generated lines of movie characters/videogame NPCs should be consistent with the actor's pre-recorded lines, for instance, and hearing someone in their own voice is more natural for communication and makes conversation easier to follow.
Pedantically, what's promoted here is a tool which features voice cloning prominently but not exclusively - other workflows demonstrated (like generating subtitles) seem mostly unobjectionable.
> Also, notice how the legitimate use-cases 1, 3 and 4 imply the user consenting to clone their own voice, which is fine
I think all, outside of potentially 8 and 11, could be done with full consent of the voice being cloned - an agreement with the movie actor to use their voice for dubbing to other languages, for example. That's already a significant number of use-cases for this tool.
> use-case 11, is "memes, satire, and parody"... and not much imagination is needed to see how steep and buttery that Teflon slippery slope is.
IMO prohibition around satire/parody would be the slippery slope, particularly with the potential for selective enforcement.
2, 5, 6, 9: It's true that in theory all you need is some way to capture the characteristics of a desired voice, but voice-cloning methods are the way to do this currently. If you want a voice assistant with a native accent, you fine-tune on the voice of a native speaker - opposed to turning a bunch of dials manually.
7, 8, 10: Here I think there is benefit specifically from sounding like a particular person. The dynamically generated lines of movie characters/videogame NPCs should be consistent with the actor's pre-recorded lines, for instance, and hearing someone in their own voice is more natural for communication and makes conversation easier to follow.
Pedantically, what's promoted here is a tool which features voice cloning prominently but not exclusively - other workflows demonstrated (like generating subtitles) seem mostly unobjectionable.
> Also, notice how the legitimate use-cases 1, 3 and 4 imply the user consenting to clone their own voice, which is fine
I think all, outside of potentially 8 and 11, could be done with full consent of the voice being cloned - an agreement with the movie actor to use their voice for dubbing to other languages, for example. That's already a significant number of use-cases for this tool.
> use-case 11, is "memes, satire, and parody"... and not much imagination is needed to see how steep and buttery that Teflon slippery slope is.
IMO prohibition around satire/parody would be the slippery slope, particularly with the potential for selective enforcement.