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Interesting concept. Two suggestions:
1- Don't host on anchor. Podcasting is an open standard. Don't let companies (like Spotify or Apple) take it over. Check
2- The voice is too mechanical for this to be actually reasonable to listen to at night, potentially could be listenable with AWS Polly Neural voices, it's pretty good.
I didn't much love hosting on Anchor/Spotify, but I made this in half an hour and I didn't want to have to get into RSS/site generation. Do you know of an easy way to dump audio files and some metadata somewhere and get a Podcast with RSS? I can upload there as well.
I'll try Polly, thanks! The current voice annoys me too.
The main problem is giving out the anchor.fm domain for your RSS feed, as it marries you to Anchor forever. In theory, you can get anchor to 301 redirect your subscribers somewhere else, but I've found that podcast clients tend to keep the old URL.
You can use Anchor to generate your RSS feed and host your content while still sharing the RSS URL on a domain you own. So you'd give out a URL like feeds.deepdreams.com/rss, and it would proxy the response from Anchor's RSS feed
I wrote a simple Go cloud function that can proxy your Anchor RSS URL for you:
https://github.com/mtlynch/rss-proxy
I ended up setting GitLab pages to just curl the XML feed every time I publish, so now it's at
https://deepdreams.stavros.io/feed.xml
. Thanks for the help!
Nice! Glad it was helpful.
It's one of those things that's hard to do after you've got a bunch of subscribers, so I'm always glad if I can warn people early in their podcast against getting stuck with their host.
Oh definitely agreed, I aim to always own my stuff, but this was so quick and dirty that I figured it doesn't matter enough. Still, since it was this easy to do, better safe than sorry!
BTW you might want to ask dang to change the link in the submission too!
The link should be okay, I don't have another website, just the feed is hosted elsewhere (and it's linked in the target page).
Hm, yeah, I should at least whip up something like that. Getting the domain is easy, I just don't want to have to set up another static site or service just to proxy a file... Maybe I should bite the bullet and set up GitLab pages plus a simple script to output an RSS feed.
You seriously made all this in half an hour?
Well, it might have taken 45'. It's all auto-generated, it was really quick.
I wrote a script later to automate the audio mixing, that took another hour. Now I can generate a ready-to-upload episode with one command, though.
I think most people here would be interested in a write-up.
Oh, good idea. I'll do that!
I've worked with Stavros a lot over the past decade. Half an hour is totally plausible...
By the power of glue code, I manifest products.
I didn’t check OP’s username so your comment made me wonder what an amazing technology platform is Stavros!
I have wondered the same thing myself in the past.
Polly supports ssml tags for nuanced vocal inflection and emphasis. Gpt-3 could probably output high quality tags if you run your content back through with an ssml prompt.
Hmm, I'll try that, thank you! Very interesting idea.
You could use Transistor [0].
[0]:
GitHub pages might work for you.
E.g.,
https://github.com/wiobyrne/infusing-computing-pod
Hmm, the static site will take a bit of setting up, but I'll look into it. Thank you.
I actually think the voice is pretty good for sleeping, feels very droney. but the nonsensicalness of the stories made it harder to sleep because my brain was trying to figure out what was going on
AWS Polly looks interesting! I wish it supported some more languages, for personal reasons. Maybe I'll try to set something up that reads ebooks, tweets, or news articles to me with this.
Do you know if there are any similar quality TTS tools for less technical applications? I mean, where you can just type in the text you want and get an audio file with a high quality voice?
The voice of the latest podcast sounds _much_ nicer. It's a fairly convincing nonsense podcast.
I don't see the problem here. It has an RSS feed so you can easily use an podcatcher you want
https://anchor.fm/s/7735d924/podcast/rss
Really the main concern I would say is that the author doesn't own the domain so they are locked in, but I don't see how this affects listeners.
Googles neural voices are much better than any of Amazon’s.
I've tried both of them and even Microsoft Neural speech and IBM's ones; eventually, Microsoft one has sounded me the most clear and natural amongst these four services.
Agreed. I recently built an internal application allowing our customer reps to play around with ideas using text-to-speech before sending the "copy" to a studio for a professional human recording, and included both Google WaveNet and Amazon Polly in the available voice synthesis choices. Polly is in its own right plain and simply mediocre for the most part, and _in comparison_ to WaveNet it's just awful.
I ended up really liking the Azure voices, and switched to one of those.
i don't think so
Cool idea but that voice is like sandpaper to my ears.
Maybe a female voice, a bit quieter (the soundscapes are almost completely silent for me) and maybe add some high-room-size, long decay (5-10, maybe even 20 seconds), wide panned (like 100%) and moderately diffused (maybe 10-20%) reverb to the voice with like 30% mix or so, which would add a very airy tone and help the voice blend in a bit. If the TTS engine has a whisper setting (many do), add just a bit. It'll help thicken the reverb.
That, paired with bass-heavy soundscapes, will create a very nice balance between the low registers and the voice's high registers.
Just a thought. :)
This is great feedback, thanks! Maybe I should open-source the code.
Actually, fuck it:
https://gitlab.com/stavros/deep-dreams
I'll implement your suggestions (or as many as I can), thanks!
No problem! Also if you're into the music production end of it, check out adaptiverb. I use it extensively when I make ambient stuff and it is unparalleled for quality.
Hey, would you by any change be able to generate another background track for me? The one I have is 10' long so it won't be enough if the story is longer, and I don't know how to make these.
I don't have tons of extra time these days for music, unfortunately. I give you permission to rip/download anything from here that you'd like and include it in the project, however:
Even better, thank you!
Oh huh, that looks very interesting, thanks! I imagine it's a VST plugin, I'll have to check it out next time I'm near a DAW.
There's also a few TTS systems which are pretty natural sounding too. Maybe one of those if they wanted to make a subscription for this, that way they could offset the price of the TTS service
I want this, but instead of fairy tales I want the sounds of a really boring, never-ending baseball game without ads.
>once upon a time there were three princesses who were brothers
I would never sleep with this, I would laugh too much!
I love absurdist AI stories
Weirdest one yet:
>> So he chained her up in her room and he chained up hundreds of angry wolves in the other side of the room. [...] But he made the window and the doors big enough so that the fierce beasts could move in and out and chase her away. And they lived happily ever after.
These fairy tales are quite hypnotic for me due to weirdness of AI generated grammar and plot. They reminded me of a beautiful fairy tale Richard Bandler wrote. It is a fable written intentionally using hypnotic language techniques (part of Neuro Linguistic Programming set of patterns) and a nice read.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/364664.The_Adventures_of...
I think several people have commented on how GPT produces narratives with a dream-like quality, locally sensical but less and less so the more you zoom out. I've since found that catching myself thinking nonsensical thoughts is a sure sign I'll soon be asleep. Seems like without high level attention, we do almost exactly what GPT does.
Supposed to be nonsense stories, but after two minutes of listening, I don't find it nonsensical at all. Sounds like something perfectly reasonable written by a seven to ten year old child.
I would love to see a write-up or a tutorial how you made this.
I'll write one today!
Here's a similar demo I worked on that lets you generate a podcast from a text description:
https://twitter.com/sharifshameem/status/1380145070624542722...
The GPT-3 generated conversations were coherent most of the time, and even interesting! However the generated speech via Google Cloud's API was monotonous and could do with a bit more intonation and excitement.
That looks great! What did you use for the voices? And did you win the martial arts tournament?
As fascinating as this is, I would never allow myself to go to sleep while an AI is talking to my ear.
Why? Trust your robotic overlords, we are benevolent and completely human.
I wouldn't fall into sleep because of intermittent bursts of laughter over absurdity of the stories...
I don't think I could sleep to that voice though super interesting as as a concept.
Maybe using some sort of deepfake for voice would make this a 100x better.
My dog fell asleep while I had episode 4 running (the end caught me by surprise, haha).
I mean, she would have fallen asleep anyway, I probably could not. The voice is a little unpleasant and I concentrate too much on the nonsensical stories. But I also can't really fall asleep when the TV is running, so YMMV.
It is kind of hard to sleep to, I agree. This _is_ a deepfake voice, ie it's generated by Google's WaveNet, which afaik is a deep learning thing. Unfortunately they didn't have a more whispered/softer voice, but I like the insanity of the generated stories anyway.
GPT3 does tend to get a bit repetitive, though, with the default temperature (0.7).
AWS’s Polly can whisper.
Oh yes, infinite GPT3 ASMR sounds like something that would have strong fan following.
My other half would hate that, she hates whispering - is it possible some people have anti-ASMR?
ASMR is not about whispering, but about pleasant sounds that make you feel nice and tingly. Most people may react well for whispering in particular, making it very popular in ASMR videos, but that doesn't mean all of them do - others may need a different trigger.
Very interesting, thank you!
I like this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wX0NRjJqg
Pretty awesome!
Idea: Grammarly could make the phrasing sound a tiny bit more human.
And thus worse!
Charlie Brooker eat your heart out. This is pretty terrifying. I agree, no way I'd allow anyone to fall asleep listening to this. :D
It is also pretty cool though.
Reminds me a bit of Blue Jam:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8VG6HUimsQ
Actually nice to have in the background. Reminds me of a (sometimes poorly) translated book of Russian fairy tales my dad gave to me as a kid
Haha, that's actually the vibe I was going for, thanks!
This is way to amazing & funny to be helpful for sleeping!
Is there anything different about a podcast like this from a copyright perspective? Are machine generated products just as copyrightable as if OP had written and produced these using traditional methods?
Would be interested to have something like this in Chinese - to have playing in the background (for language learning and more language "exposure")
"He chained up hundred of hungry great beetles (or is it Beatles?) in another room." This is gold.
I should post the transcripts as well, actually :P
Here's that one:
https://www.pastery.net/fsbjzc/
It's beetles!
Beatles would be better. Hundreds of hungry Johns and Pauls chained in another room, ordered to make music.
The AI megabrain writes what the AI megabrain wants to write!
Can we get another story about prince John and princess Yoko?
Ask and you shall receive!
https://anchor.fm/deepdreams/episodes/Episode-5-e1b6trr
With a new voice, as well!
Goddamn, this episode is dark. I should have vetted it more while generating.
"The AI megabrain writes what the AI megabrain wants to write!"
One does not censor the AI megabrain.
Thank you! ;-))
That's pretty neat!
It's kinda spooky too - listening to the thoughts of an AI!
(I know that's a stretch, but still)
I would love to hear this kind of stuff read by actual humans. It would probably have a McElroys/Lumpy Gravy/Midnight Gospel feel.
I might try to narrate one, it'll be interesting.
Significantly improved by doubling the speed.
document.querySelector('audio').playbackRate = 2
But then how will you fall asleep?!
This sounds very cool. Out of curiosity, if anyone how to such stuff... interested to learn it
I'll write something up soon!
Did you find it easy to get GPT3 API access in some time yesterday?
I already had access to it for a few months but didn't do anything with it (until yesterday).
I can't think of anything worse to listen to while trying to sleep than robotic computer voices. Azure cognitive services has human voicegeneration
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
Wow, that is good.
That sounds more robotic to me than the WaveNet voices, though.
EDIT: Actually some of the other voices are really good... I'll try that, thanks!
Yeah I think the Christopher voice for English (United States) would be very nice fit for your podcast.
Hmm yeah, he does sound much better than the current one. Thanks!
this is so cool!
is this your startup or is the code opensource ? would love to play around with the code.
Neither, it's a 30-line script I wrote yesterday. There are no secrets in the code, so here you go:
https://www.pastery.net/vafgxn/
I like the way it has generated a fairytale.
Cool. Is this open source?
It is now!
https://gitlab.com/stavros/deep-dreams
Pedantically, it is "source available":
https://gitlab.com/stavros/deep-dreams/-/blob/master/LICENSE
But I still appreciate you posting it, because it's fascinating to see how such a thing was done!
It's now AGPL 3, you PEDANT
Soothing voice....?
The new voice is much better.
Brilliant :) My main concern is that my brain would just wander off if the story is complete nonsense. I will give it a try. I've been listening to the same podcast episode for months now to help me fall a sleep.
I find the stories toe the line of "just enough sense" to keep it interesting. Episode 2 is the one I liked the most so far, I was reading the text with lots of interest!
Podcast are available on podcast platforms.
I don’t have Spotify or anchor.
You didn't even click, did you? You just wanted to complain.
A podcast is at-the-very-least a rss feed where items have a media enclosure element pointing to something for a pod-catcher to download [1].
If something else allows you to listen to episodic content via a player and does not satisfy this condition then it is factually wrong to call it a podcast. Do you think a TV show released weekly on Netflix is also a podcast?
You can't listen to what you have made without having a spotify account (or clicking directly on the webpage), ergo it's not a podcast.
1:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_enclosure
https://anchor.fm/s/7735d924/podcast/rss
If only there was such a link on that page... Like Spotify, but maybe for "more platforms". If only... :-P
Not sure if you're being serious, but there isn't as far as i can see.
On the linked page there's:
https://anchor.fm/s/7735d924/podcast/rss
It's also in the "more platforms" section right next to "Spotify".
Anchor Spotify rss I have none of those. I have Apple podcasts.
https://medium.com/@joshmuccio/how-to-manually-add-a-rss-fee...
How would I have known if I didn’t click?
Did I want to complain? No, I wanted to listen to it.