Wow, lot's of interesting discussion and excellent points made!
since you can not contact them it is even harder since you can not just mail someone.
btw same with facebook - I'd really like to email a real person but I always get some sort of AI answer and that is almost 50 shades of no but the same reason.
Yeah support is absolutely aggravating from companies like this these days. Makes the whole incident feel 10x worse to just get automated responses! Creates this tight knot in the tummy!
That's how it started for me as well with YouTube. Just automated emails. But then I watched some videos on what to do if your account get terminated and realized I could chat directly with someone at YouTube support. For 3 days now I have been chatting/emailing with an actual human being. (and no, she is not AI
) She has been actively keeping me updated on how things are progressing and in general, has been a real sweetheart and sympathetic to my case. She's the one who has organized an internal 2nd appeal for the Andrea Fryer channel in addition to the one that had almost 50K and was my income. We are now waiting for other teams in YouTube to make a decision on their internal appeal. But like I said to her, even if her appeal doesn't go through, just being able to TALK to someone human has alleviated my stress levels immensely. I've obviously been thanking her a LOT.
I assume that if something like that gets a lot of clicks, it's monetized, right?
I was not monetizing the DM songs and after I got the invitation for partnership, I was not going to either because it would feel totally wrong to do that. My motivation for sharing the videos was more like an excited kid:
"Holy crap, look at what this software can do, I can't believe it!" I never ever expected to get such a huge reaction and I couldn't believe it when articles started coming out about the song. About half the comments were negative, but then half were very positive. And it was hard not to be motivated by the positive ones to continue making more. I'm weak! What I can say though, is I never published those videos as a "product". It was merely me experimenting and wanting to share the results. I had so many people asking me to upload the songs to Spotify, but I refused because it would feel wrong.
But AI goes a big step further, it makes it almost effortless to achieve a high level of reproducibility that can actually harm the original artists (on whose data it is based). And this technology is still in its early stages! This naturally raises fears among those affected... last year, for example, we had a
strike by actors in the USA over the use of AI in films. Or from the writing business:
writers are suing OpenAI for copyright infringement .
To me, the amount of effort or time it takes to reach that result is not something that bothers me. However I do agree that if AI is able to reproduce something to be an almost exact copy that is indistinguishable from the original source and especially if it's been trained upon that sources copyrighted material without permission, this is absolutely wrong. Did I have enough moral willpower to resist the urge to share regardless? No I didn't. And I paid the price.
One of these authors is the well-known writer of the 'Games of Thrones' series, George RR Martin. Have you ever read his fascinating books (really thick tomes)? The series based on them has already been filmed, but the author, already an elderly gentleman, is still struggling with the last two volumes, and no one knows whether he will ever manage to finish them in his lifetime. So why not just put an AI on it, feed it the last episodes of the season and then have it finish the works in his style?
Yeah, creepy and doesn't feel right - I agree! I've really disliked seeing digital versions of actors that have already passed away, such as Carrie Fisher being created as a digital Princess Leia in Star Wars. I wonder what she would have thought of that.
So there are a lot of potential benefits, but also a lot of risks. You can't just let it go as it is, it's like a social atom bomb. There will be lawsuits and trials, for example to clarify copyright issues, and protests - and society must also become politically aware of what is actually happening and see where it wants to develop - which in the end (and that is also a living democracy) will then flow into the necessary legislation. It's still a bit like the Wild West, and you can't blame anyone (edit: apart from the moral aspects) for doing something that is allowed - but a lot will surely change.
Indeed. We live in scary and interesting times.
Why did you not created a ai copy of yourself? You played at high risk and you lost.
Whether or not I was representing myself with my true name versus having an anonymous channel is completely insignificant. I would have lost my channels regardless of whether I was representing myself as Andrea Fryer or RandomAnonymous name. All the work I had put in would be lost either way. Companies could have tracked down the real person behind the account easy peasy.
The mistake wasn't about using my actual identity, but using the
same email account to control
ALL of my channels. So if one channel has something super bad, they remove the entire account including all the other channels. I never planned or expected to do anything bad however, so when I saw the option to create new channels using the same email, I thought "Why not?" and here we are now. I should have totally made different emails for each channel. Little did I know I would ever get in trouble for anything, because I never intended to break any rules!
By the way: I asked the YouTube support person whether I am allowed to make new YouTube accounts with different emails. She said yes. So I guess they don't ban the person, just the email. Quite interesting.
If you would make media with my identity i would not only take down your channels but try to get you in jail.
Yikes!
But who is the ACTUAL villain here? The company (Udio) that created the software that is capable of this? Or the thoughtless messenger (me) who told people about it. From the sounds of it, you'd lock us both up! * sniff *
and the platform operator would rather remove all traces than have to deal with this new gray area.
Interesting point. You could very well be right! If this truly is the case, that I got removed because of the DM songs, this is something they will have to face and come to terms with sooner or later as a flood of new people like myself will start doing the same thing.
On the one hand, I can understand that the account does not belong to anyone with significant influence, so resistance is not to be expected (cost/benefit). On the other hand, this would have been the perfect opportunity for someone big to start dealing with this issue and set a precedent. But apparently not even Google has the balls to do that.
Yep, I was a very easy case to just snuff out for sure.
YouTube should provide you with concrete details about your possible misconduct.
Just because some users may interpret and report your content as misconduct does not necessarily mean that they are automatically right. I could imagine that your contact person from YouTube who informed you about the existence of "lots of violations" simply reads out a counter that was initiated by users reporting - forced by (maybe) false intention. I am therefore very interested to see how communication with YouTube continues. Please keep us in the loop.
Hey there Frank. So they did give me a reason,
which was this. The only problem is that I feel like I've never done any of those things! But I guess what you mean is that they should have given me direct reasons "With this video you did this and this" "In that description you wrote this and that". I think the reason they don't give exact reasons is to protect the system from being misused by nefarious players. I can understand that they have to be careful with how much they reveal. But it does make it very hard for me to figure out what I did wrong and what not to do every again.
Despite many skeptical people in this thread feeling like the real reason was still the DM videos, I disagree because they are actively trying to do a second appeal for that channel. If that would have been the real reason, there is no way in hell that support would be fighting for me to get my channel back (that has the DM songs).
This lady I'm talking with in YouTube support has been amazing. Just this morning she sent me a really nice email letting me know that they're still working hard to fix this and that she'll let me know as soon as she has more info.
Depending on how YouTube continues to react and based on the current situation, I would definitely recommend that you go to a lawyer - if this is a possible route for you.
I made the mistake of not taking this route almost two years ago when my Facebook account has been blocked due to a hacking attack and then simply got deleted afterwards, despite massive intervention from my side.
And I can fully agree to @Moogulator that reaching a real person at Facebook is fully impossible without the help of a lawyer.
My Facebook account was of no particular value to me at that time, but in hindsight I can only say that companies like Meta or Google should be held back in all possible ways from making decisions over digital existences on their own - beyond the law.
Geeeeezzzz! I'm sorry to hear what happened with your Facebook account. Horrible for them to just delete your profile like that! What the heck! I can imagine how frustrating that time must have been for you!
As for getting a lawyer. I've been at home unemployed and burned out for several years and when I say that the 50K channel really was a huge help to my income, I mean it. It wasn't much that I got, but enough to cover most of my living costs. I don't want any pity, but just trying to make the point that "getting a lawyer" is a completely impossible idea. I would gain nothing and only lose money that I don't have. For sure I agree with the "principle" but there's not much a little person in the world can do.
Got these ones as well. Also would often get Peter Murphy (Bauhaus) and Bernard Sumner (New Order). All using the exact same prompt that I used for the DM songs.
To me it felt like the AI mixed together different famous goth/synth artists and the percentage at which you heard a certain artist varied. So with some songs I would get a 99% Dave Gahan voice. With others maybe around 80% Dave Gahan. Whilst others were more like another artist but you could hear a little Gahan in the mix. So I think with the first song I did, I just happened to get very "lucky" with getting an extremely high percentage of Gahan.
I definitely wouldn't post Udio songs on my website / YouTube channel or anything like that.
You mean to stay out of trouble? Or for moral reasons? Or both?
YouTube is hosting another fairy tale hour.
At the exact moment a controversial video is published on one channel, YouTube blocks all four of the operator's channels and, when asked urgently, claims that there is a problem with one of the other channels (but not with the one where the video in question was published).
They didn't remove my channels until nearly a week later. And the reason they removed them all is because they basically banned my entire account on YouTube, so any non-offending channels are collateral damage. If they do return my Andrea Fryer channel, then it has clearly been because of something else. I'm still cursing at myself for using the same email for all my channels. Never again!
BUT: on what basis could they have had something removed? There was no copyright infringement here, no illegal upload of their releases.
I guess the copyright infringement comes from Udio clearly training it's model using their copyrighted material. But then it should be Udio they chase after, and not the hundreds of thousands of users simply sharing what Udio spits out.
So it was probably DM themselves who felt their personal rights were at risk? On this basis, I at least managed to delete a YouTube video 15 years ago that showed me in... er... somewhat unflattering action after a gig
!!!!
Well, obviously they were able to have it removed. It is at least to be assumed that there was a copyright infringement - there is no clear legal ruling on this. What is certain is that an AI cannot come up with this without a template.
We still don't know if it was because of the DM songs. Let's see what happens with the appeal. What if the voice had 99% Gahan and 1% someone else's voice mixed in with it? What if it's 50%/50%? What if there is only 10% Gahan in the voice? At what percentage ratio can we clearly say it was a copyright infringement?
Again though, this is the fault of the software, not the messenger sharing the results.
but if I had only heard it on the car radio, I probably wouldn't have noticed it, at least not on the first, superficial listen. Apart from that, the lyrics on Speak & Spell were mostly rubbish too...
A guy commented in one of my videos that they had actually played the first DM song on radio in Holland. And the DJ only revealed afterwards that it was AI. Crazy and scary! I wonder how many thought it was actually DM. And this kind of thing opens up a whole new moral can of worms!
That was a "demo" of how to do something like that. It's crazy what else is added to it - but it's really extreme as a reaction from YT to immediately kill all of her channels. That's just typical of today's "post-Apple" politics. Something like that really shouldn't even be possible.
This really should be properly accompanied by legal advice and discussed socially at least once.
And to think that I had been having YouTube channels since 2006 and never once been in trouble before. For a "first offender", I think I should have at least gotten a warning or a first strike before they just completely obliterated everything.
Just a question, can you still hear this somewhere?
Has anyone downloaded this, can someone send it to me or upload it to a cloud? Thx!
Please PM
I'm still waiting to hear back from the company that hosts my website. But if they say it's not a problem, I might possibly upload the videos there. Yesterday I was still feeling sure about doing so, but some of you guys have made me think twice hehe.
All this fuss now just because it comes from an AI?
Yeah that's my thinking as well, that what AI is doing is nothing new. It's equivalent to people have been doing for years with just more primitive tools. It's like people are getting a knee-jerk reaction to the speed and efficiency at which AI can do the same thing that took months or years before. Is the "efficiency" the actual problem here?
In principle you are right. But there is now a crucial difference:
A voice is always quite unique. Songs "like" DM were never quite "like" DM
Now there is no difference.
About 50% of the commentators in the videos would disagree! People were happy to pick out how weak the result was compared to the real thing. However, just because it does a flawed result now, doesn't mean it doesn't do a perfect result in a few months! So we will come to that point for sure!
I don't want to be misunderstood, I am a fan of free music (I place my pieces under appropriate licenses) because I think that music is not static but only a snapshot of a person/time/place/feeling that can and should be developed further, even changed if there are other people, a different time, a different place and a different feeling.
Just as I have always been an advocate of open source.
At least I know exactly where you're coming from, and agree!
Tolerance also means taking the wishes of an artist/person into consideration, and if that person doesn't want their voice to be used in songs that they had no part in, then you should take that into account and let it go. And that's exactly what's no longer the case, not least because for most people, tolerance unfortunately only goes as far as the limits of their own worldview.
On the other hand, and I actually find this much more exciting, you could now "bring back" Freddie Mercury or Janis Joplin. But as much as I'm itching to do so, there are also relatives who might be hurt if the deeply familiar voice suddenly comes across with something completely new... I'm just trying to shed light on all sides and perhaps understand them.
Excellent excellent points! Yeah "bringing back the dead" whether that's in voice or in a movie is super creepy. Of course, also creepy if the person is still alive, but just in a different (no lesser) way. There was recently also that case about the comedian George Carlin whose daughter was furious about new comedic sketches done in his voice and style. I understand her rage!
It's tricky to draw the line where something is a tribute done out love and admiration for the artist, and when it's abusive and exploitative.
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