They showcase a text to speech interface, not a fully functional chatbot, and note that their biggest clients are AAA game studios. The video and "inspired by the movie Her" PR is just clever marketing intended to drive a strong emotional response and generate clicks and word of mouth.
Currently this sounds like a threat to voice actors rather than a threat to real human connection. Judging from the sample audio generated for the article, I wouldn't be incredibly worried if I was a pro at the top of my game, but this could certainly wipe the floor of any amateur game studio voice talent, depending on pricing. But then again, there are people out there that like Hatsune Miku's singing...
The problem is that that idea gets misinterpreted as meaning that labor-saving devices can't reduce costs, when the idea (where it's true) is more about dead labor and surplus value being "baked into it" when capital is created. Tools facilitate labor, and they can transform the labor needed to do a task from intense, active participation to a role based more on guidance and pattern recognition.
For some commodities, reducing the per-unit production costs and increasing the volume a given amount of labor can produce will gradually devalue it and reduce the per-unit price (and in others it may increase demand as something suddenly becomes widely available and so consumption increases, where before its use-value was low despite its scarcity, because the whole idea of "supply and demand" is at best a vague suggestion instead of an actual fundamental principle), but for others the overall production cost and final sale price are entirely divorced because the per-unit production cost is negligible and the sale price is weirdly standardized.
So for digital media where individual copies are functionally infinite and nearly free but the creation of the initial work may have massive costs and the final sale price is going to more or less arbitrarily fall into one of a few standard brackets, then something like automated-but-curated asset creation isn't going to devalue the end product and may well be sold well below the cost of having what is functionally an artisan worker produce the assets instead. It would be sort of like using CAD and a milling machine to produce model injection-molds based on 3d models built from templates instead of having a skilled sculptor produce a physical master copy to cast resin molds from silicone or the like.
Vocaloid is a whole different thing, you don't listen to it to hear a human voice. You might as well complain that the little sound effects when characters are talking in undertale or shovel knight are taking away work.
I'm curious to know what people are listening to vocaloid for then, because personally I don't derive pleasure from the uncanny valley of song. Are you saying she would be just as popular if she sang like a character in Animal Crossing?
personally I don’t derive pleasure from the uncanny valley of song.
and I do. clearly it's not for everyone, which is why vocaloid is still kinda niche. it's clearly words that are forming, but they do not sound human. It sounds cool, I like the weird inhuman sound. I don't think she'd be as popular were she speaking gibberish, because the inhuman speech is the fun part.
My overall point was that Hatsune Miku isn't replacing voice actors anytime soon, because the cases where vocaloid would be used weren't going to feature human voices anyway, same as the weird sound-effect speech some games use. It's a stylistic choice more than a price one.
Well that's a new one on me, but real artists have accomplished the same using auto-tune and talk boxes. Most don't center their entire act around it, although some have. My overall point was that game publishers looking for that "fully voice acted" aesthetic are going to use this tech just like low talent music producers and song writers have used vocaloid.
They showcase a text to speech interface, not a fully functional chatbot, and note that their biggest clients are AAA game studios. The video and "inspired by the movie Her" PR is just clever marketing intended to drive a strong emotional response and generate clicks and word of mouth.
Currently this sounds like a threat to voice actors rather than a threat to real human connection. Judging from the sample audio generated for the article, I wouldn't be incredibly worried if I was a pro at the top of my game, but this could certainly wipe the floor of any amateur game studio voice talent, depending on pricing. But then again, there are people out there that like Hatsune Miku's singing...
you can't generate surplus value from a robot
The problem is that that idea gets misinterpreted as meaning that labor-saving devices can't reduce costs, when the idea (where it's true) is more about dead labor and surplus value being "baked into it" when capital is created. Tools facilitate labor, and they can transform the labor needed to do a task from intense, active participation to a role based more on guidance and pattern recognition.
For some commodities, reducing the per-unit production costs and increasing the volume a given amount of labor can produce will gradually devalue it and reduce the per-unit price (and in others it may increase demand as something suddenly becomes widely available and so consumption increases, where before its use-value was low despite its scarcity, because the whole idea of "supply and demand" is at best a vague suggestion instead of an actual fundamental principle), but for others the overall production cost and final sale price are entirely divorced because the per-unit production cost is negligible and the sale price is weirdly standardized.
So for digital media where individual copies are functionally infinite and nearly free but the creation of the initial work may have massive costs and the final sale price is going to more or less arbitrarily fall into one of a few standard brackets, then something like automated-but-curated asset creation isn't going to devalue the end product and may well be sold well below the cost of having what is functionally an artisan worker produce the assets instead. It would be sort of like using CAD and a milling machine to produce model injection-molds based on 3d models built from templates instead of having a skilled sculptor produce a physical master copy to cast resin molds from silicone or the like.
If people will pay the same price for something with voices done by a bunch of VAs or by one guy programming it, the company makes more money.
My AI generated NFT laughs at you all they way to the coinbase.
NFTs don't even count as value let alone surplus value
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Vocaloid is a whole different thing, you don't listen to it to hear a human voice. You might as well complain that the little sound effects when characters are talking in undertale or shovel knight are taking away work.
I'm curious to know what people are listening to vocaloid for then, because personally I don't derive pleasure from the uncanny valley of song. Are you saying she would be just as popular if she sang like a character in Animal Crossing?
and I do. clearly it's not for everyone, which is why vocaloid is still kinda niche. it's clearly words that are forming, but they do not sound human. It sounds cool, I like the weird inhuman sound. I don't think she'd be as popular were she speaking gibberish, because the inhuman speech is the fun part.
My overall point was that Hatsune Miku isn't replacing voice actors anytime soon, because the cases where vocaloid would be used weren't going to feature human voices anyway, same as the weird sound-effect speech some games use. It's a stylistic choice more than a price one.
Well that's a new one on me, but real artists have accomplished the same using auto-tune and talk boxes. Most don't center their entire act around it, although some have. My overall point was that game publishers looking for that "fully voice acted" aesthetic are going to use this tech just like low talent music producers and song writers have used vocaloid.