1y ago

Spotify is going to clone podcasters’ voices — and translate them to other languages

www.theverge.com Spotify is going to clone podcasters’ voices — and translate them to other languages

A partnership with OpenAI will let podcasters replicate their voices to automatically create foreign-language versions of their shows.

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132 comments

Make it stop.
Fuck this whole shit.
- What's your beef with this?
  In what world does someone who only speaks Spanish being able to listen to and enjoy a podcast that was recorded in English end up being such a terrible thing?
  "Broader accessibility of information? No, please make it stop!!"
  
  My beef with this, is that Spotify is relentless with pushing podcasts. I'm not interested in podcasts. I just want them permanently gone from my Spotify for all of eternity, but alas, I can't get rid of them. When they start pumping out AI generated translations of popular podcasts, I can't even imagine how hard they'll push it.
  I can choose "Music" and "Podcasts & Shows" on Home page on the mobile app at least, but that changes the feed massively and makes it useless. Spotify is such a trash app already, and I'm just waiting for an alternative that works in my country, but alas...
  
  You could argue that for major languages, where the translations would drive revenue, they should prefer to hire people to do the translations from within the target market - it would create some amount of economic opportunity rather than just being another way for the developed countries to suck up money on services from developing ones in particular.
  
  But that would be just translating the transcript. To make it comparable to what Spotify is planning is if it also contains hiring voice actors to essentially redo the entire podcast in a different language.
  No offense but depending on the podcast and the target audience this solution could cost per episode more than the entire production cost of the podcast per episode.
  
  Yeah, I could imagine that, if we're just counting the baseline minimum of what that production would cost. I think for the most popular podcasts they could easily afford it, though. It would certainly cost much less than what they're paying Joe Rogan.
- This is pretty great if the creators get the same cut...
- We are one step closer to universal translation.
  "Not in my lifetime, by choice."

132 comments