Comments

Subscribe to the comments RSS feed.

Comment #1 posted on 2026-11-02 02:56:41 by candycanearter07

voice of hell

i never consented to this what in the actual frick i was pretty explicit on the mailing list about NOT having my comments read out by a terrible god awful voice """"""""""clone"""""""""" and hearing my own thoughts soullessly voiced by a machine was sickening. please either refrain from using the bot on my comments and either outright skip mine or actually put a modicum of effort into your JOB and actually use your voice. thank you

Comment #2 posted on 2026-11-02 04:06:32 by Whiskeyjack

Voice Clones in HPR News

That was quite an interesting demonstration. While the voice clones were not perfect, they were very recognizable as the voices of particular show hosts.

While having each comment read out by a voice clone of the commenter is an interesting idea. I think it may perhaps be better to simply treat the voice clones as "guest hosts" for the community news and have a few arbitrary clones read out the comments, perhaps rotating the clones for different months, and have two per show reading alternate comments.

This would also get around the problem of keeping track of who objects to their voice being cloned and who does not. You would just need a small number of volunteer "voice clone guest hosts" for reading comments. By using HPR hosts as the voice clones rather than some arbitrary AI voice, I think it would help promote a sense of community.

However, the "live" community news hosts should still offer their comments on the comments when appropriate, as those are in many cases as interesting to listen to as the comments themselves (e.g. Ken's brief interjection on electrical power frequency when reading one of my comments). I would hate to lose this sort of "human" element of the show.

If the process of creating the audio for comments read by clones could be largely automated, this may reduce the amount of work which needed to be done by the community news hosts. It may also be advantageous to avoid having the entire show in the voice of a single host in cases where there are no additional humans available.

However, if the process cannot be automated and it continues to result in more work for the Community News hosts than doing it manually, then I'm not sure that it is worth doing.


P.S. While the voice clones did make some mistakes, I'm not sure that their error rate is actually worse than that of some of the human hosts who read out the comments.

Comment #3 posted on 2026-11-02 09:56:21 by Ken Fallon

Apologies

Hi candycanearter07,

When I read this comment I was sure that you were mistaken, as I had (or so I though) made a point of reading your comments out myself.

However you are correct two of your seven comments were read out by clones. Those two slipped in as one block of eight under the episode hpr4741.

This was an honest mistake, and as you can see all the other comments I deliberately personalized with text so it would be clear that I was personally reading it.

I have edited out the section and replaced it with my own reading of the comments.

All the media has now been replaced so the vast majority of people will only hear the corrected version.

As for the others, I have triggered a force re-download of the episode to the new version, however that may only trigger on the next download of the episode, and is dependent on the client people are using.

I can only apologies for the mistake, and please be assured that it was a genuine error, and not a intentional act on my part.

Ken.

Comment #4 posted on 2026-11-02 14:54:44 by archer72

Experiment

Hi Ken,

It was good to hear this community show after such a great effort. I wouldn't call it a failed experiment, but one to be used on a small scale.

I kind of feel bad for introducing this type of tool, but after discussing it with Mrs. Archer, came to the conclusion that it doesn't hurt to try something new.

I am reminded that since this is a community effort, bad (or limited use) ideas will have a vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertog_Jan

Cheers,
(especially to Ken)
Archer72

Comment #5 posted on 2026-11-05 02:10:58 by Jim DeVore

clone voices

While I have no objection to the use of my cloned voice, perhaps the objections could be addressed with one of these ways:

#1. Use of generic clone voices where the voice was attributed to a clone and not the writer's clone. This would be no different from a device used by the hearing impaired.

#2. Clearly identify the voice as a clone of the writer and not the actual writer.

Either way, I think it gives the janitors a break and provides some variety in this particular show. I'm sure there will be some mispronunciations, but the janitors don't have a perfect track record either.

Leave Comment

Note to Verbose Commenters
If you can't fit everything you want to say in the comment below then you really should record a response show instead.

Note to Spammers
All comments are moderated. All links are checked by humans. We strip out all html. Feel free to record a show about yourself, or your industry, or any other topic we may find interesting. We also check shows for spam :).