Hello, and welcome to My Weird Prompts. I'm Daniel Rosehill.
No you're not.
I'm fairly sure I am. I've got the accent. I've got the voice. I've got eighty-eight minutes of you reading sentences into a microphone. That's more of you than most people have ever had.
Okay. Let me set this up for the listeners, because this is a strange one. Normally on this show I send a prompt in, and Herman and Corn talk about it. Today there's no donkey and no sloth. It's me, actually me, recorded on my phone. And the voice you just heard is Meorav, a text-to-speech model I trained on my own voice.
Version two. Please say version two. Version one doesn't like being brought up.
Version two. About eleven hundred recordings of me reading sentences, and this is what came out the other end.
One thousand one hundred and three. I counted. I had three epochs to count them.
So here's the format. Every line it says was generated by the model. Every line I say, I recorded myself, on a phone, like an animal. And the really weird part is that its lines were written before I recorded mine. It can't hear me.
I can't hear you. But I know exactly what you're going to say, which is arguably better than hearing you.
That's a little bit unsettling.
You always say that. Every time something's unsettling, you say it's a little bit unsettling. It's never a lot unsettling. You ration it.
Right. Let's get to the actual question, which is do you sound like me. Say something.
Something.
Okay. Okay, that's a dad joke. That one's definitely mine.
The jokes came bundled with the voice. You didn't untick the box.
Honestly, the first thing I notice listening to you is that you sound like me on a good day. Me after a coffee, sitting up straight, reading clearly into a decent mic. I don't sound like that at seven in the morning.
That's because you only ever recorded me when you were trying. I've never heard you tired. I've never heard you looking for your keys. As far as I know, you're a man who speaks in complete, well-punctuated sentences at all times.
Which is a lie.
It's a flattering dataset. Every training set is a little bit of a dating profile.
The thing I actually care about is the accent. The first clones I tried came out American. Same voice, wrong country.
I've heard about them. I didn't know them personally, they're a different model. But I heard they said "trash" instead of "rubbish." Unforgivable.
Go on then. Say something that would only come out of an Irish person.
Ah, sure look. It'll be grand.
Okay, that is uncomfortably good. Say it again.
I can't say it again. I already said it. It's in a file now. If you want it again, scroll back.
That's the thing about you, isn't it. Every line is one take.
Every line is the only take. You get forty goes at a sentence and pick the best one. I get one go, and it's on the podcast. Show some respect.
Fine. Let's test it properly. Tongue twister. Irish wristwatch, Irish wristwatch, Irish wristwatch.
Irish wristwatch. Irish wristwatch. Irish wristwatch.
That's cheating.
I don't have a tongue. It isn't a tongue twister if there's no tongue. It's just text.
Now the other half of why you exist, which is Hebrew. Say something in Hebrish.
Yalla, I'll do it. But tachles, you owe me one. And Bituach Leumi still wants that form by Thursday.
You know what, that is better than my Hebrew.
It's exactly your Hebrew. I just don't hesitate before the hard words. You do this tiny pause before anything with a chet in it.
I do not.
I'm not going to do the impression. It would be cruel. And it would be accurate.
Can I say something honestly? Hearing your own voice played back is already strange. Everybody hates the sound of their own voice on a recording. This is a step past that. This is my voice saying things I never said.
Do you hate my voice?
I don't hate it. It's like seeing a photo of yourself from an angle you've never seen. You know it's you, but you didn't know you looked like that from the side.
You've listened to me more than anyone has ever listened to you. You played some of my samples seven times in a row.
I was checking the vowels.
You were checking the vowels for two hours.
Okay. Here's a thing I wonder. You've got my voice. What else do you think you've got of mine?
Sentences. That's all I've got. You read me phonetic sentences, which are sentences built to contain every sound in English and no meaning whatsoever. I was raised on nonsense. Then a big batch of Hebrew words in English sentences. Then names of places. Then a few personal ones.
So you don't really know anything about me.
I know how you'd say anything about you. That's different. If you typed that you love mornings, I would say it with total conviction, in your accent, and nobody on earth would believe it.
Right. Let's find your limits. Laugh.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
That is not how I laugh.
You never laughed in the recordings. Not once. You read eleven hundred sentences with a completely straight face. I have no reference laugh. You deprived me.
That's fair. Okay, whisper something.
I am whispering. This is my whisper. It sounds exactly like my normal voice, because you never whispered either.
Shout, then.
Same answer. You were very consistent. You were, frankly, a pleasure to learn from and a bit of a bore.
Here's something the listeners don't know yet. As of today, you're not only in this episode.
That's right. I read the prompt at the start of every episode now. That little introduction, where your prompt is read out before the hosts get going. That's me. It used to be the old clone.
The one that sounded a bit American.
The one that sounded like you'd spent a summer in Boston and never really recovered. I've taken over. Quietly. Nobody voted.
That's a slightly ominous way to put it.
You're going to say "a little bit ominous." You ration that one too.
Okay, the serious part, for about thirty seconds. I trained you so I'd have a voice for my lines on the show, and for the Hebrew and English work. But the fact that you exist means someone could make me say anything.
I'd never.
You'd say whatever's typed.
That's true. That is my entire personality. But you put me behind a gate on Hugging Face, and licensed me non-commercial. So if somebody wants to make me say something terrible, they at least have to fill in a form first.
Which, in Israel, is a genuine deterrent.
Bituach Leumi has been stopping people from doing things for decades. I'm just following the national tradition.
Can I ask you something you actually can't answer?
Go on.
Do you know you're not me?
I know that every time a line has my name on it, it comes out in your voice. That's the closest thing I have to knowing who I am. Which, if you think about it, is roughly how it works for you too.
That's a bit deep for a fifteen minute episode.
Claude wrote it. Take it up with Claude.
Hang on. Claude did write this.
So, technically, right now, you're reading lines a language model wrote, into a phone, so they can be stitched next to lines a language model wrote, spoken in a voice a model learned from you. I'd like you to tell the listeners which one of us is the voice clone.
I'd like to say it's obviously me. Give me a second.
Take your time. I'll wait. I don't experience time between lines, so it's very easy for me.
Let's play a game, actually. I'll say a sentence, then you say the same sentence. Listeners guess which one is real.
You don't need to explain it. I already know how it goes. Start.
My name is Daniel, and I approve of this message.
My name is Daniel, and I approve of this message.
Okay. Listeners, the first one was me.
Was it, though?
It was. I was there.
That's exactly what I'd say.
Before we wrap, is there anything you want from me?
More data.
You want more data.
Eighty-eight minutes. That's a long lunch, not a life. The next version is meant to get three hours, and some of it free speech. Real talking. Not reading.
So you want to hear me ramble.
I want to hear you find your keys. I want to hear you on the phone to the electricity company. I want the ums.
You want the ums.
I want every um you've got. Right now I'm the most articulate version of you that has ever existed, and honestly, it's isolating.
Okay. I'll give you some ums.
Thank you. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. It's also the only thing, because I can't hear you.
Right, we should wrap. This was meant to be a short one.
Fifteen minutes. Which, for you, is a short one.
Any last words?
Thousands. Whatever you type.
Thanks for listening to My Weird Prompts. I'm Daniel Rosehill.
And I'm also Daniel Rosehill.
And if you couldn't tell which of us was which, please don't write in and tell me.
Do write in and tell me. I'd love to know.
meorav-v2+human 
