Compare for yourself.<p>David Greene: <a href="https://youtu.be/xYxQrLp4MQk" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/xYxQrLp4MQk</a><p>NotebookLM: <a href="https://youtu.be/AR4dRtzFvxM" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/AR4dRtzFvxM</a><p>I think he just has "podcast guy" voice. It's pretty generic.
Yup, it's absolutely not his voice. The NotebookLM voice is pitched <i>significantly</i> higher.<p>Nor does it seem like his voice but changed "just enough" (like in pitch).<p>I agree, he just has a very generic-sounding "podcast guy" voice. And obviously, NotebookLM trained on tons of podcasts and is generating a highly generic, average-sounding voice. Which is why it's pitched higher, since David Greene has a lower than average pitch.<p>This lawsuit is either just to generate buzz to build his personal brand, or maybe he's worried about the competitive threat from AI. But there's no way he's going to win this suit. This isn't like the case with Bette Midler, where Ford intentionally hired someone to mimic her voice.
>Yup, it's absolutely not his voice.<p>However it does seem to copy the the way he "lisps" his S's. I am not sure that is common 'generic-sounding "podcast guy" voice'.
He almost certainly doesn't "lisp" his S's if you heard him in real life, but says them perfectly normally.<p>What you're hearing is the way microphones deal with the hissing of an "s", same as they struggle with plosives like "p", from the whoosh of air. It's an artifact of microphones close to the mouth, so it makes sense that Google replicates it.<p>You can use physical pop filters or digital audio filters to reduce the effect, but podcasters don't usually use the physical ones, and the level of audio processing podcasters do really depends on their level of expertise and how much they even care.
I'm glad this comment was here, it was the first thing I latched on to that seemed very specific to this person (or at least uncommon amongst general "podcast guys").<p>In particular, check out the pronunciation of the trailing S is the word "this" at 28 seconds in the clip of Davide Greene compared to 24 seconds in the Notebook LM clip. Really seemed uncannily similar to me.
When I was university, I got heavy into spoken word poetry and making hip hop. Personal Journals by Sage Francis had become a huge part of my life and rather than focus on school like a mature person I thought I’d make my own album. It turns out I have a profound lack of talent, but I got a lot of experience with a microphone.<p>To me that ‘s’ sound reminds me of the sibilance a Shure SM58 picks up without a pop filter. I hear a different side of the same idea on ‘p’ and ‘b’ as well.<p>I had a speech impediment as a youngster and the sound got in my head. Now I hear it on podcasts.
You never know, it might be worth a couple hundred grand in settlement money…
It doesn't matter if the voice is a perfect facsimile — it only matters whether a court can be persuaded that the result is derivative.<p>As the article notes, the AI doesn't even have to be trained on Greene's voice for him to have a case.<p>> <i>Grimmelmann said Greene doesn’t necessarily have to show definitively that Google trained NotebookLM on his voice to have a case, or even that the voice is 100 percent identical to his. He cited a 1988 case in which the singer and actress Bette Midler successfully sued Ford Motor Company over a commercial that used a voice actor to mimic her distinctive mezzo-soprano. But Greene would then have to show that enough listeners assume it’s Greene’s voice for it to affect either his reputation or his own opportunities to capitalize on it.</i>
I hear this one. I tend to catch patterns in tempo as much or more so as timbre and this is awfully close on both accounts. I don’t hear the Chris Fisher comparison that was also posted.<p>So I would say that where there is smoke there is sometimes fire at this point.
The NotebookLM voice sounds more like Kai Ryssdal to me.
It's like they tried their hardest to add as much vocal fry [1] as possible.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0yL2GezneU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0yL2GezneU</a>
It sounds similar, but doesn't sound the same to me.
Also how would you determine the similarity allowed? Maybe if we would have such a measure they could use that in voice model training to not allow that much similarity to a single voice, but if we don't have an agreed upon value for that than it's a subjective "sounds the same to me" rule then it's hard to follow that.
Ok, they can say that don't train on their voice, but it's very likely that a blend of voices from an "allowed" set could produce a very similar voice to his.
The more familiar you are with his voice the less similar it would sound. It’s like how siblings look more similar to strangers.
Yeah, this shouldn’t even be on HN, or Washington Post for that matter.<p>There are going to be countless people that think AI is using their voice. Humans share remarkably similar voices, but obviously you can’t copy that (other than impersonations, obviously).<p>Unless there is evidence that a company intentionally went after a specific human voice to train their AI, there’s no reason to report on these people claiming AI is using their voice.<p>Maybe if it’s someone with a very distinctive voice. But this guy, as the OP said, just has a “generic podcast guy” voice.
You absolutely can copy that, it’s called voice cloning and you can do it on as little as a few seconds of audio. Once cloned, you can generate audio with that voice, saying whatever you want it to.
To be clear, I mean someone can’t file a lawsuit against someone else for sounding like them.<p>Of course you can have an AI target someone else’s voice. My point is that unless there is evidence it was intentional, it’s silly to claim that just because it sounds similar to a human’s voice, that means it must’ve been intentional.
I've listened to tens of hours of NotebookLM, and this doesn't even seem close. If someone had played his voice for me and asked if it sounded like any LLM/bot I was aware of, I would have said no. It would not have even occurred to me that they were thinking of NotebookLM.<p>As @crazygringo said, David's voice is lower. I think it might have some of the same harmonics, but it has some lower ones too, which make the overall sound come across as lower-pitched. I'm not using technical terminology here, so perhaps someone can jump in with the appropriate terms.
When I tried NotebookLM on a long project management training deck, I thought the male voice sounded quite a bit like Leo Laporte. The format and banter seemed similar, too.
Stolen.
Dude voice, totally. I can’t describe it other than dude voice.
Congratulations. I hate both of them. Maybe I’m old but the podcast style of “there might be some interesting information here, but let me tease it for ages with a voice that makes you think something interesting is about to happen…” No sir, I don’t like it
Probably an unpopular opinion on this forum where everyone is considering can something be done vs should something be done, but it sounds like theft to me.<p>But I am also very anti-AI in the artistic space, because if it weren’t for humans freely providing so much artistic content, we wouldn’t have this outcome. And I believe the only end result will be less humans openly sharing knowledge, because some heavily money backed entities will just steal all the art and put it behind a paywall or advertisement.<p>As much as I appreciate the easy search (because actual useful search has become nonexistent since AI) and the ability to ask AI to find some metadata from a large data payload, I also dislike AI, because it has effectively broken the open internet and the willingness for humans to be open to freely sharing knowledge.
It's not theft, it's copying. Two different words, with two different meanings, and different legality, for very good reason. You can only steal things that can be taken away, which is why theft is bad, because it deprives the original owner of something they once had.<p>Copying does not directly deprive anyone of anything. In fact it just adds more value to the world, and makes it more available to more people.<p>Nobody can "copy" stuff and put it behind a paywall, because the original is still free. It's the prevention of copying that leads to expression being locked behind paywalls.<p>It's said that copying disincentivizes creativity and creation, but in practice it does the opposite. Just look at the incredible amount of music, fiction, software, stories, art, and information that have proliferated since the birth of the web.<p>What copying <i>does</i> do is it indirectly deprives people and companies of the ability monopolize profits on particular expressions without competition. But I'm not so sure that's a bad thing.<p>For example, look at the software industry. I'm extremely grateful that patents and copyright are so rarely enforced in software and UI design, and that we've all been copying the good ideas that came before us for decades with no consequence. I'm grateful the same is true of food recipes, too. I think the world would likely be a richer one if this was true for most fields and art.
Back in the day there were these Star Wars games. Now obviously Mark Hamill costs money and he wasn't going to come back for anything less than a Disney "offer you can't refuse" pay check.<p>So they got someone who could fake it pretty well.<p>Ofcourse fast forward in 2026 an actor automatically sells off their face, voice and soul when they sign a contract in perpuity.