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AI Facebook Communications Digital Software Technology

Morgan Freeman To Voice Mark Zuckerberg's Jarvis (usatoday.com) 93

Posted by BeauHD from the voice-from-above dept.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently demoed his homemade artificial intelligence assistant Jarvis for Fast Company, and while their report didn't mention anything specific about the assistant's synthesized voice at the time, we have now learned that Morgan Freeman will be the voice behind Jarvis. Robert Downey Jr. originally volunteered to be the new voice of Jarvis under certain conditions, but Zuckerberg decided to let the public weigh in on Facebook. With more than 50,000 comments, Morgan Freeman emerged victorious. USA Today reports: Zuckerberg told Fast Company he called Freeman and said: "Hey, I posted this thing, and...thousands of people want you to be the voice. Will you do it?" Freeman told Zuckerberg: "Yeah, sure." Of course, Freeman has other starring voice roles in the tech world. He's one of the celebrity voices on Google's navigation app Waze. Facebook has not disclosed whether Freeman is getting paid, according to Fast Company.
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Morgan Freeman To Voice Mark Zuckerberg's Jarvis More

Morgan Freeman To Voice Mark Zuckerberg's Jarvis

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  • Titty sprinkles (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That is all.

  • Wow... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Nottin' sais Rich Asshole like hiring James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman to record your answering machine...

  • Samuel L. Jackson (Score:5, Funny)

    by DrNico ( 691592 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @05:52PM (#53526495)
    would have been a more fun choice. When Samuel L. Jackson says it's time to go to bed, you go to bed.

  • Anyone who (yeah, I know) read the previous article would know this already. Way to up the story count, I guess...

  • You want me to turn the lights on, motherfucker? Turn your own goddamn lights on.

  • Is this really news, or is USA Today just promoting Facebook for free?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      Is this really news, or is USA Today just promoting Facebook for free?

      I don't think USA Today is a newspaper that really recognizes the difference between actual news and product placement anyway.

      • I don't think USA Today is a newspaper that really recognizes the difference between actual news and product placement anyway.

        Nowadays, I don't think any big newspaper really recognizes the difference between actual news and product placement anyway...

  • Important (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is super key for Facebook, which brings the spy capabilities on part with Amazon, Google, MS and Apple's desire to extend from listening to everything you do online, to everything you say and do within your own home. Once something is listening 100% of the time for a voice command, it can listen to anything else so long as there's a way to do it in concealed ways.

  • Why not get Paul Bettany? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rakarra ( 112805 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @06:07PM (#53526575)

    Much cheaper than Morgan Freeman or Robert Downey Jr, and he's a good Jarvis in the Iron Man movies.
    Or just as well, hire Stephen Fry, then you could have the voice of Jeeves.

    • Gilbert Gottrfried FTW.

      • Damn it!
        "The man with the golden pipes", Gary Owens passed away last year. He is best known for Laugh-In, Space Ghost, and the Space Quest narrator.

        If he just lasted a little longer, his voice could have been preserved forever with this kind of technology.

        And a product that gives snarky, sarcastic, yet funny responses in an awesome sounding voice would be fun.

        User: "What is the weather like today?"
        Gary Owens response: "The air smells damp and oppressive, like a wet nun."

        RIP Gary Owens

        ====
        A Tribute to Gary O

        • Doctor Orpheus. "What's the weather forecast?" "The weather will beeeeeee....SUUUuuUUUuuUUUUuUUUNnNNNNnnNNNnnNYYYyYYYYYYYYyyyYYYY!"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dywolf ( 2673597 )

        that would truly make the world of I have no mouth and I must scream even worse.

    • Or just as well, hire Stephen Fry, then you could have the voice of Jeeves.

      If we're going to go English, my personal choice would have been Brian Sewell -- unfortunately he died last year (and he'd never be caught dead OR alive doing such a thing). If you don't know him, watch a YouTube video or two. The guy came across as the most pretentious ass -- excuse me, arse -- in all of the UK (though I often found him to be unintentionally hilarious to listen to), and he was widely known as the only person in Britain with a more posh accent than the Royal Family.

      But his posh accent a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Douglas Rain, the voice of the HAL9000, is still alive. He's 88 but maybe his voice is good enough for capture.

        Modern computer speech synthesis uses snippets of recorded human speech. An actor performs all the various sounds that make up human speech and the computer stitches them together into arbitrary words, adjusting pitch and speed to add intonation. It might even be possible to get enough data from his work in the 1960s.

        Imagine being able to say "open the porch screen door, HAL" and then the door... O

      • If we're going to go English, my personal choice would have been Brian Sewell

        If you're going for an English Brian, then clearly the only CHOICE IS BRIAN BLESSED.

    • I'd vote for Peter Jones [wikipedia.org] if he were alive.

  • Obligatory XKCD (Score:4, Funny)

    by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @06:12PM (#53526603) Journal

    https://xkcd.com/462/ [xkcd.com]

  • Kind of disappointing... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...reading the comments on a /. story, expecting to encounter insight and interesting points-of-view but, instead, it is just juvenile and stupid racist bullshit.
    • Because this isn't a /. story. It's basically entertainment news, no one wants that here.

      • Because this isn't a /. story. It's basically entertainment news, no one wants that here.

        A.I. plus Morgan Freeman? That belongs here.

        • Both this story and the last story are completely devoid of technical details. The only thing this story adds is that Morgan Freeman is going to voice it.

  • One big issue with this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wjcofkc ( 964165 ) on Tuesday December 20, 2016 @06:22PM (#53526661)
    I nearly sat through the whole promo video, here is an abridged paraphrase:

    "I personally created this AI as a project to..."

    "I wrote this app to control it..."

    Look, I get it, he has his once a year project, but I refuse to believe he wrote the whole AI and the software to interact with it by himself. Yet, if you watch the video that is exactly what he says. If he can do that - all by himself as he states - in order to run a company and develop an advanced AI, he must be doing some kind of super-meth that does not leave you all ate up. I get the feeling there are some engineers at Facebook that face palmed over that. Credit needs to be given where it is due.

    Past that, as much as I appreciate the likes of Alexa and Google Now (Cortana catching up?), Facebook is the last company I am going to give that kind of access to. I took the plunge and deleted my Facebook account years ago. Facebook is dehumanizing, and with it's mass that is a dangerous thing.
    • Repeat after me: Alexa, Google Now, Cortana and Zuckerbergs thing ARE NOT AI. Not even close.

    • If he can do that - all by himself as he states - in order to run a company and develop an advanced AI, he must be doing some kind of super-meth [...]

      How does he do it? He takes speed. [youtube.com]

    • He did not write the "AI" component (I use the term generously), nor the voice / face recognition software, nor the part that interacts with the home automation devices. These already existed. Zuckerberg's work was primarily an integration effort, combining more or less off-the-shelf stuff. It's a cool project but it's hardly groundbreaking; many home automation enthusiasts have built similar and better systems, and in less time (though they probably had a somewhat less demanding day job...)

      With that

  • So, trying to break from the misogynist mold, the newest AI is finally something like the butler I wanted. EXCEPT IT'S A HYPHENATED-AMERICAN!!!

    So great, I can either FEEL GUILTY of male privilege with Alexa, Siri, etc or now I can FEEL GUILTY of white privilege with Jarvis.

    Or infringement on Marvel's copyright.

    One or the other two.

  • I love the idea of Morgan Freeman being an option for the voice.

    I would love to have an option of having Alex Jones being a voice of AI. That would be fun.... He used to be (still is) one of the highest paid voice over actors.

  • Shout "Hey Siri" in a room of techies or young people and see a third of their phones answer back. I've seen this done.
  • Does anyone know how many words or phrases you have record for a personal assistant?

    • Most such things these days use text-to-speech exclusively, or in concert with concatenative speech prompts.

      When using speech prompts, the numbers get large, fast, and your conversational design acquires a strong tie to recordings which are hard to obtain in uniform quality in a reliable manner. What happens when a bus runs over your voice talent?

      The Wildfire Assistant circa 1997 used 1200 voice prompts just to say North American phone numbers (1000 three digit sequences with an uplilt melody at the end (A

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by godrik ( 1287354 )

        But to make text to speech sounds like someone, you certainly still need a sample of voice and intonation. Certainly it is machine learned and reconstructed afterward. But you probably need a training sample, isn't it?
        How big would that be ?

  • I'd get one if it'd have the GladOS voice but only if it also comes with the no-so-subtle sarcasm.

  • If Jarvis were a female, I'd nominate Lucy Lawless to voice her. If the darn thing went crazy you'd know it's for real.

  • Nice toy, but when will this kind of thing (and at the same scale) be ready for the Rest of Us?

  • Does Jarvis get a new freckle [google.com] every time he explains something to the Zuck family?

  • Oh yeah, I call Morgan Freeman all the time, too.

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