Yup, it's absolutely not his voice. The NotebookLM voice is pitched significantly higher.
Nor does it seem like his voice but changed "just enough" (like in pitch).
I agree, he just has a very generic-sounding "podcast guy" voice. And obviously, NotebookLM trained on tons of podcasts and is generating a highly generic, average-sounding voice. Which is why it's pitched higher, since David Greene has a lower than average pitch.
This lawsuit is either just to generate buzz to build his personal brand, or maybe he's worried about the competitive threat from AI. But there's no way he's going to win this suit. This isn't like the case with Bette Midler, where Ford intentionally hired someone to mimic her voice.
I hear this one. I tend to catch patterns in tempo as much or more so as timbre and this is awfully close on both accounts. I don’t hear the Chris Fisher comparison that was also posted.
So I would say that where there is smoke there is sometimes fire at this point.
I don't think this is necessarily a fair comparison. In your sample of David Greene, he's being _interviewed_, which is different than hosting a radio show or podcast. For instance, turn on the nightly news and listen to the very bizarre intonation used by the newscasters. This is something they do for the broadcast, it's not how they normally talk.
For a fair comparison, you need to compare audio of David as a broadcaster rather than being interviewed: https://youtu.be/W-uGqHXoSRw?t=5 . As someone who has listened to Greene's voice on NPR a lot over the years, I hear the similarity.
I've listened to tens of hours of NotebookLM, and this doesn't even seem close. If someone had played his voice for me and asked if it sounded like any LLM/bot I was aware of, I would have said no. It would not have even occurred to me that they were thinking of NotebookLM.
As @crazygringo said, David's voice is lower. I think it might have some of the same harmonics, but it has some lower ones too, which make the overall sound come across as lower-pitched. I'm not using technical terminology here, so perhaps someone can jump in with the appropriate terms.
Yeah, this shouldn’t even be on HN, or Washington Post for that matter.
There are going to be countless people that think AI is using their voice. Humans share remarkably similar voices, but obviously you can’t copy that (other than impersonations, obviously).
Unless there is evidence that a company intentionally went after a specific human voice to train their AI, there’s no reason to report on these people claiming AI is using their voice.
Maybe if it’s someone with a very distinctive voice. But this guy, as the OP said, just has a “generic podcast guy” voice.
When I tried NotebookLM on a long project management training deck, I thought the male voice sounded quite a bit like Leo Laporte. The format and banter seemed similar, too.
I also have a hard time hearing it in this example, your second example is just the default NotebookLLM male. But there are much better examples of NotebookLLM cloning voices out there. See my other comments.
Btw, are you sure that is the part David Greene is upset about? The NotebookLLM hosts will vary their voice, and jump into and out of different voices in a glitchy manner sometimes.
Why is everybody so inclined to defend NotebookLLM here? I've heard Chris Fisher and other Jupiter Broadcasting hosts mimicked , but also leo Laporte (from TWIT) for example. It's obvious it is trained on a lot of open podcasting material and clones a voice every now and then.
It sounds similar, but doesn't sound the same to me.
Also how would you determine the similarity allowed? Maybe if we would have such a measure they could use that in voice model training to not allow that much similarity to a single voice, but if we don't have an agreed upon value for that than it's a subjective "sounds the same to me" rule then it's hard to follow that.
Ok, they can say that don't train on their voice, but it's very likely that a blend of voices from an "allowed" set could produce a very similar voice to his.
It doesn't matter if the voice is a perfect facsimile — it only matters whether a court can be persuaded that the result is derivative.
As the article notes, the AI doesn't even have to be trained on Greene's voice for him to have a case.
> Grimmelmann said Greene doesn’t necessarily have to show definitively that Google trained NotebookLM on his voice to have a case, or even that the voice is 100 percent identical to his. He cited a 1988 case in which the singer and actress Bette Midler successfully sued Ford Motor Company over a commercial that used a voice actor to mimic her distinctive mezzo-soprano. But Greene would then have to show that enough listeners assume it’s Greene’s voice for it to affect either his reputation or his own opportunities to capitalize on it.
Congratulations. I hate both of them. Maybe I’m old but the podcast style of “there might be some interesting information here, but let me tease it for ages with a voice that makes you think something interesting is about to happen…” No sir, I don’t like it
Probably an unpopular opinion on this forum where everyone is considering can something be done vs should something be done, but it sounds like theft to me.
But I am also very anti-AI in the artistic space, because if it weren’t for humans freely providing so much artistic content, we wouldn’t have this outcome. And I believe the only end result will be less humans openly sharing knowledge, because some heavily money backed entities will just steal all the art and put it behind a paywall or advertisement.
As much as I appreciate the easy search (because actual useful search has become nonexistent since AI) and the ability to ask AI to find some metadata from a large data payload, I also dislike AI, because it has effectively broken the open internet and the willingness for humans to be open to freely sharing knowledge.
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]).
I kept listening waiting to hear the voice that was supposed to sound like him, and never did.
Was it the first one (I heard three different voices during the clip)? That one is considerably deeper than the podcaster's voice, and has different tones, too. It definitely wasn't the last one, that one was much higher pitched (and then a female voice in the middle).
Feels like a big stretch, to say the least. But I can tell a big difference between the two.
Ultimately, it's like some of the music copyright lawsuits, where they're suing over chord progression. There are a billion voices on the planet -- any AI generated voice is going to sound similar to someone else's real voice (and again, I don't hear it at all in this case).
EDIT: So it's the third voice apparently. The pitch is close, but the tones and accents still definitely feel "off" enough that it doesn't sound like they were intentionally going for this guy. It still feels like a stretch to me, but not as much as the first voice did.
I think I rememeber an episode where he played a clip of AI Chris talking about Linux at the start of an episode and I genuinely couldn't tell the difference
In the clip, I thought he was playing a prank by reading the script of NotebookLM as the third voice (after the woman). Was that really NotebookLM? I've only heard the first two voices and the first voice didn't sound like him to me, but the last one definitely sounded like him.
I think a lot of sport announcers sound the same. There might just be classes of voices where you expect a faceless voice in some scenario to sound a certain way.
He'll likely file in California or Federal and ask for Jury trial. I think a Jury will be sympathetic. I doubt Google will want this to go to a jury trial - not worth the risk, further news cycles of negative PR and impact on staff morale. NPR is credible and liked.
It doesn't matter whether it sounds distinctive to you. What matters is whether it's close enough to the real person's voice to be an infringement.
Just like it doesn't matter if you used a machine to duplicate a painting. It's still an infringement.
You can't publish a Harry Potter novel and then throw up your hands and say, "It wasn't me. The AI decided to name the characters Hargid and Hermione and Snape."
Google says it paid a voice actor. If it provides proof of that, good. But like with a lot of AI things, we're in new territory here.
Seems like there's a market for a tool that can compare an AI voice to a library of known famous voices so that companies like Google can tweak their machines to not sound too much like someone who can be harmed by a sound-alike.
People are bad at distinguishing strange voices in a lineup, yes. That is, anyone in this thread who hasn't heard much of either the NotebookLM or Greene's voice would be a terrible witness.
However, the equation changes considerably when the voice becomes familiar. You can imagine it like going from CPU to an ASIC. The brain is rather good at telling when a voice is your friend or not, the evolutionary pressure should be clear. Therefore, the people most qualified to speak on this matter will be first and foremost Greene and his podcast fans. It's a matter of exposure.
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)
There seems to be a lot of confusion in this thread around the human mind's processing of voice sounds.
As with most (all?) things we do, exposure is king. This is how we don't die from trying to process infinite dimensional reality. The brain compresses, it prunes. Things seem similar if you don't have much need to distinguish them.
Unless you've listened to hours of either NotebookLM or Greene, you simply won't be able to participate in the distinguishing of these voices with much ability.
Aren't these models are trained publicly available data? this might hold for some rando you doesn't have their likeness in many places to be gobbled up by the Datamongers but these programs imitating someone who has been in the media for 20 years like David Greene is not the result of chance unless you are being excessively charitable.
Even if it is complete chance, there's no way to peer inside and confirm that because these things are completely opaque black boxes
I know someone who is one of the top-rated voiceover artists on Fiverr. Their voice appeared on a video recently I heard and it was definitely cloned from them (as it was not a project they would have worked on).
It's so easy to do now. You can just grab your favorite voiceover artist's demo reel and clone it from there. The chances of getting caught are slim, and what is the (poorly paid) artist going to do? Most of them will lack the resources to fund a protracted court case to sue some anonymous users in Tajikistan making AI slop videos en masse.
tantalor|15 days ago
David Greene: https://youtu.be/xYxQrLp4MQk
NotebookLM: https://youtu.be/AR4dRtzFvxM
I think he just has "podcast guy" voice. It's pretty generic.
crazygringo|15 days ago
Nor does it seem like his voice but changed "just enough" (like in pitch).
I agree, he just has a very generic-sounding "podcast guy" voice. And obviously, NotebookLM trained on tons of podcasts and is generating a highly generic, average-sounding voice. Which is why it's pitched higher, since David Greene has a lower than average pitch.
This lawsuit is either just to generate buzz to build his personal brand, or maybe he's worried about the competitive threat from AI. But there's no way he's going to win this suit. This isn't like the case with Bette Midler, where Ford intentionally hired someone to mimic her voice.
hinkley|15 days ago
So I would say that where there is smoke there is sometimes fire at this point.
hippo22|14 days ago
binarynate|14 days ago
apparent|15 days ago
As @crazygringo said, David's voice is lower. I think it might have some of the same harmonics, but it has some lower ones too, which make the overall sound come across as lower-pitched. I'm not using technical terminology here, so perhaps someone can jump in with the appropriate terms.
jader201|15 days ago
There are going to be countless people that think AI is using their voice. Humans share remarkably similar voices, but obviously you can’t copy that (other than impersonations, obviously).
Unless there is evidence that a company intentionally went after a specific human voice to train their AI, there’s no reason to report on these people claiming AI is using their voice.
Maybe if it’s someone with a very distinctive voice. But this guy, as the OP said, just has a “generic podcast guy” voice.
Zigurd|15 days ago
dgeiser13|15 days ago
koolba|15 days ago
teekert|14 days ago
Btw, are you sure that is the part David Greene is upset about? The NotebookLLM hosts will vary their voice, and jump into and out of different voices in a glitchy manner sometimes.
Why is everybody so inclined to defend NotebookLLM here? I've heard Chris Fisher and other Jupiter Broadcasting hosts mimicked , but also leo Laporte (from TWIT) for example. It's obvious it is trained on a lot of open podcasting material and clones a voice every now and then.
spyder|15 days ago
wackget|15 days ago
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0yL2GezneU
rectang|15 days ago
As the article notes, the AI doesn't even have to be trained on Greene's voice for him to have a case.
> Grimmelmann said Greene doesn’t necessarily have to show definitively that Google trained NotebookLM on his voice to have a case, or even that the voice is 100 percent identical to his. He cited a 1988 case in which the singer and actress Bette Midler successfully sued Ford Motor Company over a commercial that used a voice actor to mimic her distinctive mezzo-soprano. But Greene would then have to show that enough listeners assume it’s Greene’s voice for it to affect either his reputation or his own opportunities to capitalize on it.
xbar|15 days ago
quietsegfault|15 days ago
tbossanova|15 days ago
disposition2|15 days ago
But I am also very anti-AI in the artistic space, because if it weren’t for humans freely providing so much artistic content, we wouldn’t have this outcome. And I believe the only end result will be less humans openly sharing knowledge, because some heavily money backed entities will just steal all the art and put it behind a paywall or advertisement.
As much as I appreciate the easy search (because actual useful search has become nonexistent since AI) and the ability to ask AI to find some metadata from a large data payload, I also dislike AI, because it has effectively broken the open internet and the willingness for humans to be open to freely sharing knowledge.
teekert|15 days ago
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...
jader201|15 days ago
I kept listening waiting to hear the voice that was supposed to sound like him, and never did.
Was it the first one (I heard three different voices during the clip)? That one is considerably deeper than the podcaster's voice, and has different tones, too. It definitely wasn't the last one, that one was much higher pitched (and then a female voice in the middle).
Feels like a big stretch, to say the least. But I can tell a big difference between the two.
Ultimately, it's like some of the music copyright lawsuits, where they're suing over chord progression. There are a billion voices on the planet -- any AI generated voice is going to sound similar to someone else's real voice (and again, I don't hear it at all in this case).
EDIT: So it's the third voice apparently. The pitch is close, but the tones and accents still definitely feel "off" enough that it doesn't sound like they were intentionally going for this guy. It still feels like a stretch to me, but not as much as the first voice did.
walthamstow|15 days ago
allenu|15 days ago
hinkley|15 days ago
But it is always possible that this is what Chris sounds like in his own head. Nobody listening to audio will hear it the way he does.
oniony|15 days ago
johnwheeler|15 days ago
dehrmann|15 days ago
fhub|15 days ago
reaperducer|15 days ago
It doesn't matter whether it sounds distinctive to you. What matters is whether it's close enough to the real person's voice to be an infringement.
Just like it doesn't matter if you used a machine to duplicate a painting. It's still an infringement.
You can't publish a Harry Potter novel and then throw up your hands and say, "It wasn't me. The AI decided to name the characters Hargid and Hermione and Snape."
Google says it paid a voice actor. If it provides proof of that, good. But like with a lot of AI things, we're in new territory here.
Seems like there's a market for a tool that can compare an AI voice to a library of known famous voices so that companies like Google can tweak their machines to not sound too much like someone who can be harmed by a sound-alike.
neural_thing|15 days ago
Unearned5161|15 days ago
However, the equation changes considerably when the voice becomes familiar. You can imagine it like going from CPU to an ASIC. The brain is rather good at telling when a voice is your friend or not, the evolutionary pressure should be clear. Therefore, the people most qualified to speak on this matter will be first and foremost Greene and his podcast fans. It's a matter of exposure.
bamboozled|15 days ago
prodigycorp|15 days ago
lysace|15 days ago
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)
Leynos|15 days ago
ghostly_s|15 days ago
Unearned5161|15 days ago
As with most (all?) things we do, exposure is king. This is how we don't die from trying to process infinite dimensional reality. The brain compresses, it prunes. Things seem similar if you don't have much need to distinguish them.
Unless you've listened to hours of either NotebookLM or Greene, you simply won't be able to participate in the distinguishing of these voices with much ability.
dpe82|15 days ago
ghostly_s|15 days ago
ukuina|15 days ago
bethekidyouwant|15 days ago
recursive|15 days ago
j-bos|15 days ago
b00ty4breakfast|15 days ago
Even if it is complete chance, there's no way to peer inside and confirm that because these things are completely opaque black boxes
kelseyfrog|15 days ago
qingcharles|15 days ago
It's so easy to do now. You can just grab your favorite voiceover artist's demo reel and clone it from there. The chances of getting caught are slim, and what is the (poorly paid) artist going to do? Most of them will lack the resources to fund a protracted court case to sue some anonymous users in Tajikistan making AI slop videos en masse.
maximalthinker|14 days ago
[deleted]
barbazoo|15 days ago
Turns out he still has his own voice, that one sounds like him.
13415|15 days ago