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Alexa's "celebrity voices" were still alive before they were pulled.
Are "old" voices that are "dead" still protected?
If I'm not convinced, can I ask my AI for a voice I find more convincing. Or soothing. Or whatever.
A programming session with the Three Stooges.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Gerry Schmitz wrote: Are "old" voices that are "dead" still protected?
I believe so.
Even if you do AI, you have to pay royalties of sorts (or get permission), I am sure, if you are going to use the likeness, visual or auditory of a celebrity, or any person for that matter - alive or dead.
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Do impersonators pay royalties? Per word? Per minute?
("The AI was impersonating, your honor. Yes sir, it was new material.")
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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I don't know the laws regarding this topic, I'm just guessing here.
I am sure there are laws though that govern what can and cannot be done in these scenarios.
If I were to make $$ with John Wayne's voice, I am sure that his estate or the entities that hold rights to his work, will want to charge royalties for the use. I can't imagine a scenario where they would be more than happy to let me do it for free.
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I had replaced many windows sounds and visual studio sounds with simple voice samples of HAL or Star Trek's Nomad probe.
How do you like HAL's 'My mind is going. I can feel it.' as Windows shutdown sound?
Or Nomad's 'You are in error! You are a biological unit! You are inperfect!' on visual studio compilation errors?
I have lived with several Zen masters - all of them were cats.
His last invention was an evil Lasagna. It didn't kill anyone, and it actually tasted pretty good.
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In case anyone else is as ignorant of this as I was presumably the current voices were cut because they were not making money compared to what they were paying for them.
Amazon is discontinuing Alexa’s celebrity voices, even if you paid for them - The Verge[^]
But as to the voices of those that have died.
Law is difficult. For example there are quite a few works (books, etc) that cannot be published because the holder of the copyright cannot be tracked down (to expensive.) And without current publishing the possibility exists that all copies of the work will be lost before the copyright expires.
But that apparently does not apply to faces nor voices. Copyright does not apply. At least not per the following which does cite the case law which is nice.
Voices, Copyrighting and Deepfakes[^]
But it probably makes it difficult. For starters how do you create the voice of Peter Lorre without copying movies where copyright does apply? At a minimum you would need to trace all of his relatives and then get permission (and probably pay them) for the category of those that have the most 'right' to allow the usage.
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If I vary the amplitude, is it still the same voice? (I doubt it). If through some "fault" of nature I wind up sounding like someone else, will I get muzzled?
Living through reason.
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Gerry Schmitz wrote: If I vary the amplitude, is it still the same voice?
Probably unsettled law. But I doubt it. Once you mess with the tonality it is no longer the same voice.
Compare that to changing the key of a popular song. That is infringement but the law for voices is not the same.
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On the other hand, there have been well-known voice impersonators, such as Rich Little and Vaughn Meader, and how can you determine whether a fake is impersonating a celebrity or an impersonation of that celebrity?
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Hey, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy had a RADIO program from 1937 to 1956, how does THAT work? Ventriloquism on the radio.
https://www.radiohalloffame.com/charlie-mccarthy-show[^]
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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We had a similar one in the UK - Archie Andrews - Wikipedia[^] . Of course when it transferred to TV everyone could see that Peter Brough was a lousy ventriloquist.
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Edgar and Charlie were also featured in movies during that period so they had some appeal.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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I'd definitely take Peter Lorre or Boris Karloff.
Or maybe Carroll O'Conner doing Archie Bunker.
"Alexa, what time is it?"
"Time for you to get off your Pinko butt and get a job, meathead!"
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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The context should be in reference to "impressionists"; and not "impersonators" - which would include images, etc. and is clearly protected.
An "impressionist" mimics "sounds."
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Just imagined a Teams add on - intercepts the audio from each. person speaking, convert to text, then replay on your own system in the voice of your choosing. So anytime you take a call from "Bob", could sound like Porky Pig etc. Would make meetings much more interesting....
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How hard is it to learn in a professional environment ?
I would probably pick it up as part of a seasoned team.
There are a few jobs offer close to home with this requirement.
It's for a local game company (with all the good and bad things it comes with, at least it's not UbiSoft or EA ... so)
I'm off to watch some tutorials now, but would like to know some real life experiences.
Thanks.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Like anything else, it's about understanding their "object model" (IMO). For whatever reason, I found Unity more inviting. (More C# examples?)
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Maximilien wrote: It's for a local game company
Just noting that rather than the engine you might want to look at the history of game company longevity. At least if that matters for your career.
For me looking at it seems like a lot of them don't last very long.
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The company is from 1992. It's well established.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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Sorry man, wish I could help. If you make like a 3D Tetris clone while learning though, let us know. 
Jeremy Falcon
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I came to UE4 (Unreal Engine 4) with over 20 years programming experience, mostly using C in graphics, CAD (Computer Aided Design) and mapping applications.
I was the first person in our organisation to use UE4. It was my job to assess it's suitability as a new development platform in addition to the two CAD applications we already use: MicroStation and AutoCAD. We liked having access to the source code and that UE4 is multi-platform. The UE4 documentation also looked better than the Unity documentation.
The bad news is that starting from scratch it took me about three years to become semi-competent with UE4. The difficulty is that game engines cover such a large number of largely separate areas, each of which could easily (and often do) have a dedicated specialist. When I started (with no game engine experience) I was unaware that these disciplines even existed!
The good news is that the second person on the team got up to speed in about three months, and the third person was productive almost straight away. Issues that took me weeks to partially understand could be answered immediately.
As someone previously mentioned, the hardest part is understanding their object model. There are dozens of ways a game engine could be put together and UE4 have gone down one path. It's neither particularly good or particularly bad - it's just the one they have chosen and the one you have to learn.
Another take-away lesson is that programming is no more than 20% of the overall activity. MRA (Modelling, Rigging, Animation), UI (User Interface), packaging, level design, shaders, PBR (Physically Based Rendering) Materials, audio, physics, QA are all huge topics in themselves.
The third lesson (a hard one) is that there is a lot of bad information out there on the internets. There are hundreds of "How to get started in UE4/UE5" videos and articles and each one spawns dozens of forum posts similar to "I followed your video and am stuck with X". The majority of these end with "I tried Y and Z - they might work for you". Not inspiring!
TL;DR if you are joining an existing team - go for it.
(You can track the evolution of one of our projects in these articles)
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I just asked my son your question - he works in this area. His reply was:
"It's not really a pick-it-up-as-you-go situation at all. Complex environment so you're definitely awful at it for the first like, year"
FWIW
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Thanks.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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