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Rgal said:
When a company's expenses outpace its income, it's called "losing money", not making. When people say the company is "making money", they usually, if not always, explicitly mean the inverse is true.
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Right... so when company "makes money", but that money barely covers expenses, and there are ever increasing expenses, clearly the company does not have "money trouble".

Again, if expenses are rising faster than income can be generated, the company will have money trouble because it won't be able to have money to keep up with those expenses. It is not binary state of "no problems what so ever" or "literally losing money".

For example:

Company has machines that are old. Replacing them costs 50k. However, company is only making 5k in profits. Everything else is going into fixing those machines, and every year the expenses at maintaining those machines rises. However, market is not growing at the same rate. So company keeps making less and less money, while needing to replace old machines. Company now has money trouble, and needs to either find a way to cut expenses or find new source of money.
 
Mandemon said:
Right... so when company "makes money", but that money barely covers expenses, and there are ever increasing expenses, clearly the company does not have "money trouble".

Again, if expenses are rising faster than income can be generated, the company will have money trouble because it won't be able to have money to keep up with those expenses. It is not binary state of "no problems what so ever" or "literally losing money".

For example:

Company has machines that are old. Replacing them costs 50k. However, company is only making 5k in profits. Everything else is going into fixing those machines, and every year the expenses at maintaining those machines rises. However, market is not growing at the same rate. So company keeps making less and less money, while needing to replace old machines. Company now has money trouble, and needs to either find a way to cut expenses or find new source of money.
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Cool example, questionable relevance. I do not even slightly believe that Hasbro isn't making enough profit to be able to afford replacing any equipment whatsoever, and "our shareholders will have to postpone buying that yacht they wanted" doesn't count as money trouble as far as I'm concerned.
 
Well, you are free to believe what you want. It won't change how the company sees things.
 
Mandemon said:
Well, you are free to believe what you want. It won't change how the company sees things.
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You've hollowed put and replaced your entire argument this point.

At first, your claim was that Hasbro had no other choice they were in dire financial straits, they were losing money.

And now, that claim has been reduced to "Hasbro is losing money by paying voice actors when they could make more profit by not doing that."
 
I'm pretty bullish on AI voicing. It's pretty good now and I think it's going to get even better when used properly and the tooling properly spools up. I don't think think it's quite there *yet* (there are AI voiced youtube channels I like, and other's I'll scroll right past when they pop up) but in another 5, 10 years I can see it being as good as humans.

But to be good as humans, it will likely need more than raw text. I'm thinking something like a AI Voice Studio, where some kind of voice director role applies markup to the text. Shout this word, whisper this some, some stressed here, project confidence there. Tell it how you want it to act as if it were an actor in other words. It will likely be cheaper than a full cast of voice actors but it won't be free text-in-voice-out if you want a professional product until AI gets a whole lot more general.
 
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10ebbor10 said:
You've hollowed put and replaced your entire argument this point.

At first, your claim was that Hasbro had no other choice they were in dire financial straits, they were losing money.

And now, that claim has been reduced to "Hasbro is losing money by paying voice actors when they could make more profit by not doing that."
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Not even close to what I argued. Let's go over again:

Mandemon said:
Which is changes the context of "corporate moves to adopt AI voice actors" quite significantly. It's no longer "corporate being cheap for sake of cheap", it's "corporate trying to save money because they got money trouble by using AI dubs".
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To which Rgal argued that company can not have money trouble if they are making money. To which I responded that it is not binary state of "trouble" or "making money". Company can be having money trouble if their expenses rise faster than income. To which Rgal then dismissive replied that Hasbro is just being cheap because of stockholders.

Which is... well, what can be said to that? We can either wait for numbers and see what is true, or pretend that Hasbro is actually making money so much that each stockholder could buy a new yacht and they are just being cheap.

Hasbro Revenue 2010-2024 | HAS

Hasbro annual/quarterly revenue history and growth rate from 2010 to 2024. Revenue can be defined as the amount of money a company receives from its customers in exchange for the sales of goods or services. Revenue is the top line item on an income statement from which all costs and expenses...
www.macrotrends.net www.macrotrends.net

  • Hasbro revenue for the quarter ending March 31, 2024 was $0.757B, a 24.35% decline year-over-year.
  • Hasbro revenue for the twelve months ending March 31, 2024 was $4.760B, a 16.42% decline year-over-year.
  • Hasbro annual revenue for 2023 was $5.003B, a 14.57% decline from 2022.
  • Hasbro annual revenue for 2022 was $5.857B, a 8.78% decline from 2021.
  • Hasbro annual revenue for 2021 was $6.42B, a 17.47% increase from 2020.
Their revenue has been decline for past two years, and so far first quarter of this year has not fixed anything. Ragl, in turn, claims that Hasbro has no problems because they are still making money.
 
Mandemon said:
Not even close to what I argued. Let's go over again:



To which Rgal argued that company can not have money trouble if they are making money. To which I responded that it is not binary state of "trouble" or "making money". Company can be having money trouble if their expenses rise faster than income. To which Rgal then dismissive replied that Hasbro is just being cheap because of stockholders.

Which is... well, what can be said to that? We can either wait for numbers and see what is true, or pretend that Hasbro is actually making money so much that each stockholder could buy a new yacht and they are just being cheap.

Hasbro Revenue 2010-2024 | HAS

Hasbro annual/quarterly revenue history and growth rate from 2010 to 2024. Revenue can be defined as the amount of money a company receives from its customers in exchange for the sales of goods or services. Revenue is the top line item on an income statement from which all costs and expenses...
www.macrotrends.net www.macrotrends.net

  • Hasbro revenue for the quarter ending March 31, 2024 was $0.757B, a 24.35% decline year-over-year.
  • Hasbro revenue for the twelve months ending March 31, 2024 was $4.760B, a 16.42% decline year-over-year.
  • Hasbro annual revenue for 2023 was $5.003B, a 14.57% decline from 2022.
  • Hasbro annual revenue for 2022 was $5.857B, a 8.78% decline from 2021.
  • Hasbro annual revenue for 2021 was $6.42B, a 17.47% increase from 2020.
Their revenue has been decline for past two years, and so far first quarter of this year has not fixed anything. Ragl, in turn, claims that Hasbro has no problems because they are still making money.
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Thanks, very informative statistic! I stand my case, however. If your gross profit (same site, different tab) is measured in $billions USD, it doesn't matter if it increased compared to last year or not, you do not have "money trouble".

And if your gross profit is measured in $billions USD and yet your revenue keeps falling, it is more apt to say you have greed trouble.
 
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Glimmervoid said:
I'm pretty bullish on AI voicing. It's pretty good now and I think it's going to get even better when used properly and the tooling properly spools up. I don't think think it's quite there *yet* (there are AI voiced youtube channels I like, and other's I'll scroll right past when they pop up) but in another 5, 10 years I can see it being as good as humans.

But to be good as humans, it will likely need more than raw text. I'm thinking something like a AI Voice Studio, where some kind of voice director role applies markup to the text. Shout this word, whisper this some, some stressed here, project confidence there. Tell it how you want it to act as if it were an actor in other words. It will likely be cheaper than a full cast of voice actors but it won't be free text-in-voice-out if you want a professional product until AI gets a whole lot more general.
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That sounds absolutely soul-crushing.
 
Rgal said:
This, but unsarcastically. It is a shame people keep recommending Adobe stuff to hobbyists instead of open-source alternatives like Gimp or Krita.
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It was unsarcastically. I find the incremental workflow of video editing or image creation/modification soul grinding every time I try. Probably a problem how my brain is set up, considering I can stare for hours at MLoC and flow with the modifications.
 
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I don't understand looking at Hasbro's overall numbers no matter what numbers you use. Aren't decisions like this often based on the budget of the individual project?

Glimmervoid said:
AI voiced youtube channels
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That seems something of a different animal to begin with. It's not like they're using it to replace a voice actor (at least not in the kind of content I'm thinking of), they're just using it in place of their own voice.

I've played around a little with AI voice changing, and the main thing that annoys me is that it really screws up laughter.

-Morgan.
 
There's some interesting stuff being done with SynthV, but that's in the context of Vocaloid culture, where the majority of work was already done through voice synthesizers filled with recorded human voice samples twisted and contorted by software. There's much less opposition to the idea of synthesized voices as a substitute for actual singing there and given how, uh, Vocaloid already sounds, SynthV ends up sounding less artificial than existing Vocaloid voicebanks.
 
Axslashel said:
I consider this a con to be honest.
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"Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It's the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them." —Brian Eno.

Yeah, I've heard one or two SynthV songs and while flexibility it offers to musicians is nice, they unfortunately lack that VOCALOID (and Megpoid, and UTAUloid) charm of semi-mechanical melodic singing voice.

On that note, I wonder what in generative AI of today will be remembered fondly by the generation that grows up taking it for granted. Screwy hands? Messed-up perspectives? Loads and loads of generic-looking quasi-realistic anime girl pseudo-watercolors?
 
Rgal said:
On that note, I wonder what in generative AI of today will be remembered fondly by the generation that grows up taking it for granted. Screwy hands? Messed-up perspectives? Loads and loads of generic-looking quasi-realistic anime girl pseudo-watercolors?
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The even earlier AIs that had spirals and dog faces everywhere are already cool. Can't wait to see more of them.
 
Rgal said:
On that note, I wonder what in generative AI of today will be remembered fondly by the generation that grows up taking it for granted. Screwy hands? Messed-up perspectives? Loads and loads of generic-looking quasi-realistic anime girl pseudo-watercolors?
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The third I think. Screwy hands and messed-up perspectives have been issues with art since people were trying to make art.
 
I feel like it's gotta be the insanely specific porn, right?
 
Arthur Frayn said:
I feel like it's gotta be the insanely specific porn, right?
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I haven't actually seen any porn involving AI art, honestly. My own ventures into the tech are solidly SFW too, and mainly revolve around making X character from a fanfic or media property in a particular style, posture or background.
 
Mizu said:
I haven't actually seen any porn involving AI art, honestly. My own ventures into the tech are solidly SFW too, and mainly revolve around making X character from a fanfic or media property in a particular style, posture or background.
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Yeah so it turns out that when some people are handed a tool that will try to draw basically anything, and doesn't have a consciousness so it can't feel ashamed or embarrassed of itself, well…

 
Axslashel said:
I consider this a con to be honest.
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I'm not sure I get it. If they're not claiming that it wasn't synthesized, what part is a con?

Rgal said:
On that note, I wonder what in generative AI of today will be remembered fondly by the generation that grows up taking it for granted.
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If I were to name a specific trait that I sometimes find charmingly weird, it would probably be objects turning into something else midstream. Over *here*, it's hair. But over *here*, it's clothing, or arms, or part of a wall decoration, or...

This might already be on it's way out though. I won't claim to understand (or particularly remember) the explanation, but apparently SDXL is a lot less prone to that kind of object decoherence. (Which is also supposed to help with the hands, as I understand it.)

-Morgan.
 
Rgal said:
Yeah, I've heard one or two SynthV songs and while flexibility it offers to musicians is nice, they unfortunately lack that VOCALOID (and Megpoid, and UTAUloid) charm of semi-mechanical melodic singing voice.
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Synth V can be tuned to somewhat emulate that style, but there's unfortunately not yet a mode to turn off the ML postprocessing completely. It would probably require a major update (possibly to the point of requiring voice providers to return to the studio) to make this happen since IIRC the AI and non-AI voicebanks use almost completely different pipelines under the hood, though this is obviously hard to verify when it comes to closed-source software.

Stylistic preferences aside (am personally a fan of the more realistic style, but totally understand why others might prefer the more mechanical sound), I wish Synth V got a bit more attention outside of immediately Vocaloid-adjacent circles. It's probably the best example I can think of when it comes to consumer-grade AI done right - ethically-trained and presented as a tool instead of a wholesale end-to-end solution. One could potentially argue that it risks putting for-hire singers out of business, but I'd say that's not hugely likely. Even with Synth V's AI voicebank lineup having been out for a few years now, I can't think of a single producer who has gone from hiring humans to using Synth V exclusively... but there are plenty of examples of producers (KIRA, Cepheid, etc., and hopefully myself as well in the coming months) who have historically gone from vocal-synth-only to also working with human singers, and I see no reason for that trend to change even as the software continues to improve.
 
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