8 ms·

Star Trek computer voice model is something I have yet to encounter, and I've looked repeatedly :) It's not about a specific voice, it's the fact they managed

by 100ms 2mo ago

Star Trek computer voice model is something I have yet to encounter, and I've looked repeatedly :) It's not about a specific voice, it's the fact they managed to capture "I am a utility" perfectly in the voice. Our modern friends do not want to be thought of as a utility, but to engender trust and agency all of their own and that's a huge problem for me.

purpleidea 2mo ago
For many years, I've wanted ED-209 (robocop) voice from something like espeak or similar. Still can't find anything good. Not for chat, just as a way to make notification messages that sound like ED-209.
- 100ms 2mo ago
  I think that's mostly just a frequency shift :) You could probably recreate it with another model and some effects on top. Also, why the hell not for voice mode haha.
- bitwize 2mo ago
  One popular speech synth from back in the day, I believe it was WillowTalk, had a voice called Colossus, which sounded like the voice module of the computer from Colossus: The Forbin Project. This voice was used for that of CATS in the famous "All your base are belong to us" Flash video. Another WillowTalk voice was a clone of DECtalk's Perfect Paul good enough to be used as the voice in the MC Hawking rap recordings.
  - pdntspa 2mo ago
    I am having a hell of a time googling for WillowTalk, do you know any links/places where I can learn more? Maybe even download something?
    - bitwize 2mo ago
      It came from a company called Willow Pond Software. That seems to narrow searches down. WillowTalk is apparently still of interest to Half-Life modders because another WillowTalk voice, possibly a clone of DECtalk's Huge Harry, was used as the Black Mesa VOX facility-wide announcement system in the original Half-Life.
andai 2mo ago
I just tell them to talk like Jarvis. I tried the "cold logic" prompt but it turned them into a bunch of assholes.
- Melonai 2mo ago
  I noticed that too, I guess the content in the training data suggests that when some text self-identifies as "cold, hard logic" it additionally assumes a mean tone. Additionally it makes responses more likely to disagree even when given inputs that are more or less valid. A while ago I tested out giving some idea to a model with the "hard logic" prompt, then taking its own output, reverting the conversation and giving it its own statement again, making it disagree with the very same statement it just made itself. This was mostly just humorous, and doesn't indicate too much, after all both statements might've been wrong in some way, but the statement itself was moreso an opinion with no fully right answer, showing this tendency to disagree. I guess when we tell models to use "cold logic" they don't interpret that purely definitionally, but moreso with what this statement usually implies, which is often a disagreement between two people, one trying to leverage supposed logic to disagree and denigrate the other party, oftentimes actually arguing out of emotion and not the logic they claim to use. This probably occurs enough to give model responses a mean tint. That's my theory on why this could occur at least.
100ms 2mo ago
I thought to try voice cloning with dots.tts ( https://huggingface.co/spaces/rednote-hilab/dots.tts https://huggingface.co/spaces/rednote-hilab/dots.tts ), the result is pretty good, but likely wouldn't be fast enough to use on a quasi-realtime basis: Input clip: https://vocaroo.com/19QtEPtwTjOS https://vocaroo.com/19QtEPtwTjOS Prompt text: There are 14 varieties of tomato soup available from this replicator. With rice, with vegetables, Bolian style, with pasta specify hot or chilled. Output: https://vocaroo.com/1f3XuQQoSzwB https://vocaroo.com/1f3XuQQoSzwB
- jldugger 2mo ago
  I think the request here is not about sounding like Majel Barrett but in keeping the output extremely terse and unobtrusive. There's been a few studys showing that novices love LLM output that's long, but experts hate it. As an example, I've been tasked with using some agentic PM tool to write specs, and it keeps generating these huge page long outputs with "HBR voice" bolded summaries of paragraph long bulletpoints. I.e.: > Right-size hard, and watch the one open-ended edge. Endorse the DRI's simplifications wholesale: drop the runbook-per-alert mandate (keep 1–2 diagnostic-only runbooks for the high-priority set), and ride durability on the existing weekly incident + monthly operational reviews — no new governance. The single scope-creep risk is the coverage strand (gaps are defined by absence); bound it to gaps evidenced by real, already-missed customer-facing outages, not a proactive gap hunt. Curing ownership gaps (e.g. foo-bar, no clear owner) is finite in-scope work. There's dozens of these every iteration. I can't imagine trying to deal with that via voice, I would just zone out after the second sentence.
  - ijidak 2mo ago
    When the voice models start rambling, I think of C-3PO. When Uncle Owen told 3PO to shut up and 3PO said, "Shutting up, sir." Or even some scenes where Data did something similar. It's funny to now experience it.
  - elzbardico 2mo ago
    AHAHAHA. HBR Voice. Thanks man, you captured it perfectly. Finally I have a name for that.
razster 2mo ago
You can using chatterbox and a couple voice to voice models. Sorry I don’t recall the whole process but you can YouTube Star Trek computer voice AI.

by 100ms 2mo ago

purpleidea 2mo ago

For many years, I've wanted ED-209 (robocop) voice from something like espeak or similar. Still can't find anything good. Not for chat, just as a way to make notification messages that sound like ED-209.

100ms 2mo ago
I think that's mostly just a frequency shift :) You could probably recreate it with another model and some effects on top. Also, why the hell not for voice mode haha.
bitwize 2mo ago
One popular speech synth from back in the day, I believe it was WillowTalk, had a voice called Colossus, which sounded like the voice module of the computer from Colossus: The Forbin Project. This voice was used for that of CATS in the famous "All your base are belong to us" Flash video. Another WillowTalk voice was a clone of DECtalk's Perfect Paul good enough to be used as the voice in the MC Hawking rap recordings.
- pdntspa 2mo ago
  I am having a hell of a time googling for WillowTalk, do you know any links/places where I can learn more? Maybe even download something?
  - bitwize 2mo ago
    It came from a company called Willow Pond Software. That seems to narrow searches down. WillowTalk is apparently still of interest to Half-Life modders because another WillowTalk voice, possibly a clone of DECtalk's Huge Harry, was used as the Black Mesa VOX facility-wide announcement system in the original Half-Life.

andai 2mo ago

I just tell them to talk like Jarvis. I tried the "cold logic" prompt but it turned them into a bunch of assholes.

Melonai 2mo ago
I noticed that too, I guess the content in the training data suggests that when some text self-identifies as "cold, hard logic" it additionally assumes a mean tone. Additionally it makes responses more likely to disagree even when given inputs that are more or less valid. A while ago I tested out giving some idea to a model with the "hard logic" prompt, then taking its own output, reverting the conversation and giving it its own statement again, making it disagree with the very same statement it just made itself. This was mostly just humorous, and doesn't indicate too much, after all both statements might've been wrong in some way, but the statement itself was moreso an opinion with no fully right answer, showing this tendency to disagree. I guess when we tell models to use "cold logic" they don't interpret that purely definitionally, but moreso with what this statement usually implies, which is often a disagreement between two people, one trying to leverage supposed logic to disagree and denigrate the other party, oftentimes actually arguing out of emotion and not the logic they claim to use. This probably occurs enough to give model responses a mean tint. That's my theory on why this could occur at least.

100ms 2mo ago

I thought to try voice cloning with dots.tts ( https://huggingface.co/spaces/rednote-hilab/dots.tts https://huggingface.co/spaces/rednote-hilab/dots.tts ), the result is pretty good, but likely wouldn't be fast enough to use on a quasi-realtime basis: Input clip: https://vocaroo.com/19QtEPtwTjOS https://vocaroo.com/19QtEPtwTjOS Prompt text: There are 14 varieties of tomato soup available from this replicator. With rice, with vegetables, Bolian style, with pasta specify hot or chilled. Output: https://vocaroo.com/1f3XuQQoSzwB https://vocaroo.com/1f3XuQQoSzwB

jldugger 2mo ago
I think the request here is not about sounding like Majel Barrett but in keeping the output extremely terse and unobtrusive. There's been a few studys showing that novices love LLM output that's long, but experts hate it. As an example, I've been tasked with using some agentic PM tool to write specs, and it keeps generating these huge page long outputs with "HBR voice" bolded summaries of paragraph long bulletpoints. I.e.: > Right-size hard, and watch the one open-ended edge. Endorse the DRI's simplifications wholesale: drop the runbook-per-alert mandate (keep 1–2 diagnostic-only runbooks for the high-priority set), and ride durability on the existing weekly incident + monthly operational reviews — no new governance. The single scope-creep risk is the coverage strand (gaps are defined by absence); bound it to gaps evidenced by real, already-missed customer-facing outages, not a proactive gap hunt. Curing ownership gaps (e.g. foo-bar, no clear owner) is finite in-scope work. There's dozens of these every iteration. I can't imagine trying to deal with that via voice, I would just zone out after the second sentence.
- ijidak 2mo ago
  When the voice models start rambling, I think of C-3PO. When Uncle Owen told 3PO to shut up and 3PO said, "Shutting up, sir." Or even some scenes where Data did something similar. It's funny to now experience it.
- elzbardico 2mo ago
  AHAHAHA. HBR Voice. Thanks man, you captured it perfectly. Finally I have a name for that.

razster 2mo ago

You can using chatterbox and a couple voice to voice models. Sorry I don’t recall the whole process but you can YouTube Star Trek computer voice AI.