Miku herself seems unfamiliar with the technology, however.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I noticed that part of the bumf for the Vocaloid4 engine mentions that it has a new setting called Pitch Snap Mode, which, and I quote, "easily generates a robot-like voice." Yes, evidently, Vocaloid now sounds lifelike enough that they felt they had to add a special mode to make it sound autotuned again. :)

As far as the characters go, I find myself becoming rather partial to Gumi, who, despite being (as far as I can tell?) The Competition, has appeared in at least one ultra-cute duet with Miku. (I realize these things are all unofficial, but still. How adorable is that? Particularly their interactions toward the end.)

The MMD modeling technology (which, I gather, is rather less official than the voice libraries?) is also farther along than I would have thought. This one is more than three years old now, for instance, and look at how facially expressive the model is. Presumably they're even better now.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The logic behind this is that it allows electronic artists to have a vocalist they wouldn't normally have.

People have gotten record deals thanks to Miku.

Indeed. In this instance, I was mainly talking about the visuals. It was probably not in the original design brief that Miku and Gumi would have some low-level yuri tension going on. :)

But yeah, I get that these are characters that don't have One Story, specifically because the creators want the users not to feel constrained by the, what would you call it, canonical imperative. These are clearly people who understand how fandoms work. (And who, if they are wise, do not investigate too closely what results. I don't think I could take being a character designer. Not with a shoulder-of-Orion coefficient as high as the Internet Age's. :)

>The logic behind this is that it allows electronic artists to have a
>vocalist they wouldn't normally have.
>
>People have gotten record deals thanks to Miku.

One can only imagine how the singers' union feels about that...

OTOH, what an odd sensation it must be for the people who provide the voice templates to realize that their voices are likely to outlive them, in a more universal sense than that implied by conventional recording technology. It is already really strange, if you think about it for a second, that we can and do routinely hear the voices and see the moving, breathing images of dead people. That was utterly impossible before a hundred, hundred and twenty years ago, and now it's so routine we don't even think about how deeply weird it is.

(I feel like this bit of the conversation may have happened around here before. I'm not even sure I'm the one who originally said it. If I am unconsciously plagiarizing someone else, it's because you had such a good point that it's been stuck in my head ever since.)

Anyway. That's odd enough, but the Vocaloid concept takes it to a whole 'nother level. Like getting a singing telegram from the other side of the Uncanny Valley. By the same token, though, I kind of like that there's still a human presence in there somewhere, like a vocal version of mocap animation. I think it adds something that a voice library built on purely synthetic tones may not be able to duplicate—although I'm sure people are trying, and their attempts are getting closer all the time. That's just the nature of this kind of development.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I have long been not-entirely-comfortably aware that if I lived in that future and I could afford it, I would probably be that guy Motoko Kusanagi chides in Ghost in the Shell for being a shut-in whose only friend is a sexbot that cost as much as a Ferrari. You didn't really need to rub it in. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I've had that song drift in and out of my head since I heard it before a Rifftrax Live show. I just wanted to share the pain.

(And I'd probably be a borderline suicidal salaryman, so you're still ahead of the game ;) )

But, in one scene, the main character, the main character manages to wreck the (single) com-set used during scouting/infiltration, and his team-mate tells him, "you have fart-beans for brains" in, I believe, some African language.

What with the 'fuckhead' and 'radio', it sort of rang a bell.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

You thought I was kidding about that, didn't you?

INT. A screening room at NEGI TOWER (Hatsune Heavy Industries HQ). The video has just finished playing. When the lights come up, LUKA is regarding GUMI and RIN expressionlessly, arms folded. In the background, LEN can be seen looking anywhere but at them, blushing so furiously it is literally incandescent, while MIKU and MEIKO look amused and KAITO is doing the facepalming-headshake thing.

LUKA
(shaking her head)
Gumi... you are a terrible influence on that poor girl.

GUMI
(pointing indignantly at RIN)
Hey, she wrote the lyrics.

LUKA
I see.

Pause.

LUKA
Rin... you are a terrible influence on that poor girl.

--G.
"'Take that unbreathing thing and force it in my mouth'? Seriously?"
"It's a weird translation!"
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Basically, I'm not sure it's possible to apply a one-size-fits-all legal age to sentient constructs.

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

Sadly, that also means that all others are property that their owners can do anything they like with

I think that's a safe baseline assumption, on both counts. I was talking about 33/S's in my last post; I suddenly wonder if the whole legal situation of constructs pre-Turing was created by GENOM (who created them as well as a whole lot of other such constructs), using their influence to make their products more accessible and palatable to organics?

------
Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her

Most of the galactic law involving machine intelligences long predates the appearance of GENOM on the scene; much of it was adapted from legal codes prevailing before the establishment of galactic governance in, e.g., Corellian or Salusian space, and some of those codes were themselves adapted from older ones. A lot of Corellian common law, for instance, dates back (in often-heavily-modified form, admittedly) to Corellia's founding as a colony of the ancient Atlantean Empire, ca 5,000 Standard years ago, and some of those laws were inherited from the Padishah, millennia before that. (Although obviously not the laws about thinking machines, as they were flatly illegal under Padishah law.)

The Turing Institute, obviously, has only been called that since the early 21st century; before Earth Contact it was called something else. It's been there, under various names, for a very long time. To paraphrase Edward R. Murrow, GENOM didn't create the legal climate that gave them such dominion over their product line, they only exploited it, and rather successfully.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

There have been occasions when the petitioners have received a kind of quasi-liberated status, similar to that of children, where they remain dependents but have more rights than toasters. That's pretty rare, though.

Mind you, that means the whole flap over Rin's book was nonsense from the start, and she could have chosen to (have her lawyers) point that out and save everybody a lot of trouble, but she thought it was more fun to just let them wave their arms. Besides, the consequent publicity made the book sell like whaaaaaat, not that it probably wouldn't have anyway.

Anyway, I think you guys may be kind of burying the lede here, which is that Rin—not Luka, or Meiko, or Gumi—wrote a book called Sex and the Single Vocaloid. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.