Morgan Freeman To Voice Mark Zuckerberg's Jarvis (usatoday.com) 93
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.
Titty sprinkles (Score:1)
That is all.
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Who let this garbage through?
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Titty Sprinkles explained. [youtube.com]
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No, I still don't think that explains it.
He's a good narrator and actor, but I do not understand the titty sprinkles reference.
Wow... (Score:1)
Nottin' sais Rich Asshole like hiring James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman to record your answering machine...
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Samuel L. Jackson (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Samuel L. Jackson (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, you could have it start a conversation with Siri -
"English motherfucker, do you speak it?"
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I think he's referring to Go the fuck to sleep [youtube.com] as read by Samuel L Jackson.
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No. People would be motherfucking tired of motherfucking Jarvis in no motherfucking time.
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I don't know if any of you are basketball fans, but I want my personal digital assistant to be voiced by Timberwolves (and former Bulls) coach Tom Thibodeau. If you've ever heard him speak, you know why.
https://youtu.be/IK6MsBDCUkg [youtu.be]
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James Earl Jones - "I find your lack of fate disturbing!"
I wonder, though why not a female voice? I think it is an established fact that both genders listen more carefully to female voices and they are also easier to be heard...
Err, yeah, we know (Score:2)
Anyone who (yeah, I know) read the previous article would know this already. Way to up the story count, I guess...
Maybe not the best choice (Score:1)
You want me to turn the lights on, motherfucker? Turn your own goddamn lights on.
Free advertising (Score:2)
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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.
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Nowadays, I don't think any big newspaper really recognizes the difference between actual news and product placement anyway...
Important (Score:1)
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)
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.
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Gilbert Gottrfried FTW.
RIP Gary Owens (Space Quest, Space Ghost) (Score:2)
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
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that would truly make the world of I have no mouth and I must scream even worse.
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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
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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
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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.
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Obligatory XKCD (Score:4, Funny)
https://xkcd.com/462/ [xkcd.com]
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Kind of disappointing... (Score:2, Informative)
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Because this isn't a /. story. It's basically entertainment news, no one wants that here.
A.I. plus Morgan Freeman? That belongs here.
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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)
"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.
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ARE NOT AI
Define: AI.
AI, n. Something you don't have.
Re: One big issue with this (Score:1)
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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]
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With that
yay SJW! (Score:2)
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.
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There's something appealing to bossing around The Boss.
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uh...?
[backs away slowly]
There should be a real choice (Score:1)
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.
interesting hack (Score:2)
How big is the spoken phrase database? (Score:2)
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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
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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 ?
Re: How big is the spoken phrase database? (Score:1)
They seem to be getting quite small. Adobe (ugh) recently demonstrated a "Photoshop for voice" which appeared to take a modest voice recording, transcribe it, and allow you to edit the text to get a new recording of the speaker saying what you'd typed.
Really? (Score:2)
I'd get one if it'd have the GladOS voice but only if it also comes with the no-so-subtle sarcasm.
Femputer (Score:2)
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.
When is this ready for regular people? (Score:2)
Nice toy, but when will this kind of thing (and at the same scale) be ready for the Rest of Us?
In that case... (Score:2)
Does Jarvis get a new freckle [google.com] every time he explains something to the Zuck family?
Rolodex (Score:2)