Adobe Creative Cloud
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 10 months, 2016–2024
7:21 · 1.9M views · Nov 4, 2016
Adobe's VoCo demo from the MAX 2016 Sneak Peeks, co-hosted by Jordan Peele, showing software that changes words in a voiceover by typing new ones.
HN cites it as the early example of voice cloning and audio deepfakes, with some recommending Peele's reaction and others calling the demo fake or never shipped.
13 comments from Hacker News
I really recommend the Adobe demonstration of their VoCo speech audio "photoshopping" because of Jordan Peele's reaction: this video . More technology demos should have unscripted, sincere reactions like that.
I really recommend the Adobe demonstration of their VoCo speech audio "photoshopping" because of Jordan Peele's reaction: this video . More technology demo should have unscripted, sincere reactions like that.
The "Adobe Photoshop for voice" is quite amazing: this video (you can skip the first ~third to get to the demo)
this video "Wife" sounds exactly the same in both places, so all this did was copy the exact waveform from one point to another. Nothing is being synthesized. If this is all this app can do, it would be quicker and easier to do this manually. That little "guh" noise at the beginning of the first "wife" could also be manually cleaned up and pitch/formant shifted to sound more natural with respect to its position in the sentence. this video The word "Jordan" is not being synthesized. He was recorded saying "Jordan" beforehand for this insertion demo and they're trying to play it off as though this was synthesized on the fly. This is all a scripted performance. Jordan is phoning in his task of feigning surprise. this video Here they double down on their lie. The phrase "three times" was clearly prerecorded. If Adobe wanted to put the bare minimum effort into trying to convince anyone this was a real product that exists and is capable of synthesizing speech on the fly, then they'd toss a beachball around the audience and have them shout out words to type. This is a fraudulent demonstration of a nonexistent product and an audacious insult to everyone's intelligence. Adobe is falsely taking credit and getting endless free publicity for a breakthrough they had no hand in. They are stealing the hype recently generated by Google WaveNet and praying they'll have a real product ready by whatever deadline they've set for themselves.
Lyrebird has real tech capable of doing what they claim, whereas Adobe's demo was completely fake. this video "Wife" sounds exactly the same in both places. All they did was copy the exact waveform from one point to another, like an automated cut and paste in Audacity. Nothing is being synthesized. this video The word "Jordan" is not being synthesized. The speaker was recorded saying "Jordan" beforehand for this insertion demo and they're trying to play it off as though it was synthesized on the fly. That's incredibly dishonest. This is a scripted performance and Jordan is feigning surprise. this video Again, the phrase "three times" here was prerecorded. This was a phony demonstration of a nonexistent product. Reporters parroted the claims and none questioned what they witnessed. Adobe falsely took credit and received endless free publicity for a breakthrough they had no hand in by staging this fake demo right on the heels of the genuine interest generated by Google WaveNet. They were hoping they'd have a real product ready before anyone else. If Adobe had a real product then they'd have proven it with a demo as alarming, undeniable, and straightforward as Lyrebird's. Instead they relied on aesthetics and flashy, polished, deceptive performance art with famous actors and de facto applause tracks to cover up the fact that they have nothing.