#future of AI text to speech

[updated-reviews]

Elevate Your Marketing Videos: The Power of AI Text-to-Speech with Different Voices

In today's fast-paced digital world, capturing audience attention is more crucial than ever. Marketing videos have become a cornerstone of successful marketing campaigns, offering a dynamic and engaging way to connect with your target audience. However, creating high-quality video content can be a time-consuming and expensive endeavor, especially when it comes to professional voiceovers.

This is where the magic of AI text-to-speech (TTS) technology comes in. Imagine a world where you can transform your marketing scripts into captivating voiceovers with just a few clicks. AI text-to-speech allows you to do just that, offering a powerful and versatile tool for businesses of all sizes. By leveraging the power of AI, you can create professional-sounding voiceovers in a variety of styles and languages, all at a fraction of the traditional cost.

Beyond the Human Voice: Unveiling the Versatility of AI Text-to-Speech (AI text to speech different voices)

Gone are the days of being limited to a single voice narrator. AI text-to-speech technology boasts a vast library of AI voices, each offering unique characteristics and personalities. This opens up a world of possibilities for your marketing videos. Imagine tailoring the voiceover to perfectly match the tone and style of your brand. Need a friendly and approachable voice for a product explainer video? AI has you covered. Creating a high-energy commercial? No problem! The variety of AI voices allows you to select the perfect narrator to resonate with your target audience and enhance the overall message of your video.

But the versatility of AI text-to-speech goes beyond just voice selection. Many platforms allow you to fine-tune the speaking style, adjusting the pace, pitch, and even adding emphasis for dramatic effect. This level of control empowers you to craft the ideal voiceover that seamlessly integrates with the visuals of your video, creating a truly immersive experience for viewers.

Crafting the Perfect Tone: How AI Creates Emotionally-Charged Voiceovers (convert text to speech with emotions AI)

The human voice is a powerful tool for conveying emotions. A skilled voiceover artist can inject the right amount of enthusiasm, authority, or warmth to captivate the audience. But what if you could achieve the same level of emotional resonance with AI? Believe it or not, AI text-to-speech technology is rapidly evolving to incorporate emotional intelligence.

Some advanced platforms allow you to choose from a range of pre-programmed emotional styles, such as joyful, persuasive, or urgent. This allows you to tailor the emotional delivery of your voiceover to perfectly compliment the message you're trying to convey. Imagine a heartwarming ad for a charity using a gentle and compassionate voice, or a product demonstration packed with excitement and energy. AI text-to-speech empowers you to evoke the desired emotions in your audience, fostering a deeper connection and ultimately driving results.

Elevate Your Reach: Expanding Your Audience with Multilingual AI Voices (AI text to speech for marketing videos)

The global marketplace offers a vast pool of potential customers. However, language barriers can often present a significant hurdle for marketing campaigns. AI text-to-speech technology breaks down these barriers by offering a multilingual solution. Many platforms support a wide range of languages, allowing you to create voiceovers in the native tongue of your target audience. This not only enhances the overall understanding and engagement of your videos but also demonstrates a commitment to catering to a global audience.

Imagine reaching new markets and expanding your brand awareness without the need for expensive voiceover translations. AI text-to-speech provides a cost-effective and efficient way to localize your marketing videos, ensuring your message resonates across borders.

From Budget-Friendly Options to Premium Solutions: Choosing the Best AI Text-to-Speech Software (best AI text to speech software)

The beauty of AI text-to-speech technology lies in its accessibility. A variety of options are available, catering to different needs and budgets. For those just starting out, several free AI text-to-speech converters (free AI text to speech converter) offer basic functionality. These platforms can be a great way to experiment with AI voiceovers and see if they align with your marketing strategy. However, keep in mind that free options may have limitations in terms of voice selection, audio quality, and customization features.

For businesses seeking a more professional and feature-rich solution, several premium AI text-to-speech software providers exist. These platforms offer a wider range of voices, advanced control over audio parameters, and even integration with text to speech API with AI for seamless workflow integration with your video editing software. While premium options come with a cost, the investment can pay off handsomely, allowing you to create high-quality marketing videos that truly stand out from the crowd.

[shironezuninja]

We don’t have the 2009 “Hulk vs.” movie on streaming platforms!? Are these companies stupid!?

[conkreetmonkey]

Look, all I'm saying is that we now have the exact right amount of technology to make Rusty and Ventrillomatic from the infamous Veggietales WEED EATER bit real, like actually EXACTLY as they were portrayed on the show. We have voice recognition. We have janky TTS. We have a computer program that can generate random nonsense in response to any prompt.

[nowadais]

Discover #Alibaba Wan 2.1 – a powerful #AI tool that converts text into high-resolution videos with ease:

#technology #artificialintelligence #news #technews #ainews

[ai-innova7ions]

Transform Your Projects with Murf AI's Voice Generation Magic!

Discover the transformative power of Murf AI's voice generation magic in this exciting short! This video showcases how AI audio technology is revolutionizing content creation with its incredible AI narration and voiceover capabilities. Explore the future of voiceovers with cutting-edge artificial intelligence that brings digital narration to life.

Murf AI:

Murf AI features advanced speech synthesis and synthetic voices, allowing you to create compelling voice clones and experience voice modulation like never before.

From professional projects to personal endeavors, see how Murf AI can elevate your work with its innovative voice toolkit.

Join us as we delve into Murf examples that highlight the versatility of this voiceover software, and witness the impact of voiceover technology on the industry.

Whether you're a content creator or simply curious about voice cloning AI, this video is a must-watch! Transform your projects today with Murf AI's voice generation magic!

#murfai #digitalvoicetechnology

[innova7ions]

Engage Audiences Effortlessly Using Deep Brain AI!

Deep Brain AI is revolutionizing the video generation industry with its cutting-edge platform, offering powerful AI solutions like avatars and video generators. Imagine creating high-quality generative AI videos from just a script! These photorealistic avatars can speak in multiple languages, thanks to advanced text-to-speech capabilities.

This versatile tool is a game changer for various industries, including retail, education, and media. It enables businesses to produce professional-grade videos swiftly and efficiently. With Deep Brain AI, the future of content creation is here—making it easier than ever to engage audiences and streamline production processes.

#DeepBrainAI

#VideoGeneration

[novella-november]

See, here's the thing about generative AI:

I will always, always prefer to read the beginner works of a young writer that could use some editing advice, over anything a predictive text generator can spit out no matter how high of a "quality" it spits out.

I will always be more interested in reading a fanfiction or original story written by a kid who doesn't know you're meant to separate different dialogues into their own paragraphs, over anything a generative ai creates.

I will happily read a story where dialogue isn't always capitalized and has some grammar mistakes that was written by a person over anything a computer compiles.

Why?

Because *why should I care about something someone didn't even care enough to write themselves?*

Humans have been storytellers since the dawn of humankind, and while it presents itself in different ways, almost everyone has stories they want to tell, and it takes effort and care and a desire to create to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard or speech to text to actually start writing that story out, let alone share it for others to read!

If a kid writes a story where all the dialogue is crammed in the same paragraph and missing some punctuation, it's because they're still learning the ropes and are eager to share their imagination with the world even if its not perfect.

If someone gets generative AI to make an entire novel for them, copying and pasting chunks of text into a document as it generates them, then markets that "novel" as being written by a real human person and recruits a bunch of people to leave fake good reviews on the work praising the quality of the book to trick real humans into thinking they're getting a legitimate novel.... Tell me, why on earth would anyone actually want to read that "novel" outside of morbid curiosity?

There's a few people you'll see in the anti-ai tags complaining about "people being dangerously close to saying art is a unique characteristic of the divine human soul" and like...

... Super dramatic wording there to make people sound ridiculous, but yeah, actually, people enjoy art made by humans because humans who make art are sharing their passion with others.

People enjoy art made by animals because it is fascinating and fun to find patterns in the paint left by paw prints or the movements of an elephants trunk.

Before Generative AI became the officially sanctioned "Plagiarism Machine for Billionaires to Avoid Paying Artists while Literally Stealing all those artists works" people enjoyed random computer-generated art because, like animals, it is fascinating and fun to see something so different and alien create something that we can find meaning in.

But now, when Generative AI spits out a work that at first appears to be a veritable masterpiece of art depicting a winged Valkyrie plunging from the skies with a spear held aloft, you know that anything you find beautiful or agreeable in this visual media has been copied from an actual human artist who did not consent or doesn't even know that their art has been fed into the Plagiarism Machine.

Now, when Generative AI spits out a written work featuring fandom-made tropes and concepts like Alpha Beta Omega dyanamics, you know that you favorite fanfiction website(s) have probably all been scraped and that the unpaid labours of passion by millions of people, including minors, have been scraped by the Plagiarism Machine and can now be used to make money for anyone with the time and patience to sit and have the Plagarism Machine generate stories a chunk at a time and then go on to sell those stories to anyone unfortunate enough to fall for the scam,

all while you have no way to remove your works from the existing training data and no way to stop any future works you post be put in, either.

Generative AI wouldn't be a problem if it was exclusively trained on Public Domain works for each country and if it was freely available to anyone in that country (since different countries have different copyright laws)

But its not.

Because Generative AI is made by billionaires who are going around saying "if you posted it on the Internet at any point, it is fair game for us to take and profit off," and anyone looking to make a quick buck can start churning out stolen slop and marketing it online on trusted retailers, including generating extremely dangerous books like foraging guides or how to combine cleaning chemicals for a spotless home, etc.

Generative AI is nothing but the works of actual humans stolen by giant corporations looking for profit, even works that the original creators can't even make money off of themselves, like fanfiction or fanart.

And I will always, always prefer to read "fanfiction written by a 13 year old" over "stolen and mashed together works from Predictive Text with a scifi name slapped on it", because at least the fanfiction by a kid actually has *passion and drive* behind its creation.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Humans in the loop” must detect the hardest-to-spot errors, at superhuman speed

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

If AI has a future (a big if), it will have to be economically viable. An industry can't spend 1,700% more on Nvidia chips than it earns indefinitely – not even with Nvidia being a principle investor in its largest customers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39883571

A company that pays 0.36-1 cents/query for electricity and (scarce, fresh) water can't indefinitely give those queries away by the millions to people who are expected to revise those queries dozens of times before eliciting the perfect botshit rendition of "instructions for removing a grilled cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible":

https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-inference-cost-of-search-disruption

Eventually, the industry will have to uncover some mix of applications that will cover its operating costs, if only to keep the lights on in the face of investor disillusionment (this isn't optional – investor disillusionment is an inevitable part of every bubble).

Now, there are lots of low-stakes applications for AI that can run just fine on the current AI technology, despite its many – and seemingly inescapable - errors ("hallucinations"). People who use AI to generate illustrations of their D&D characters engaged in epic adventures from their previous gaming session don't care about the odd extra finger. If the chatbot powering a tourist's automatic text-to-translation-to-speech phone tool gets a few words wrong, it's still much better than the alternative of speaking slowly and loudly in your own language while making emphatic hand-gestures.

There are lots of these applications, and many of the people who benefit from them would doubtless pay something for them. The problem – from an AI company's perspective – is that these aren't just low-stakes, they're also low-value. Their users would pay something for them, but not very much.

For AI to keep its servers on through the coming trough of disillusionment, it will have to locate high-value applications, too. Economically speaking, the function of low-value applications is to soak up excess capacity and produce value at the margins after the high-value applications pay the bills. Low-value applications are a side-dish, like the coach seats on an airplane whose total operating expenses are paid by the business class passengers up front. Without the principle income from high-value applications, the servers shut down, and the low-value applications disappear:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Now, there are lots of high-value applications the AI industry has identified for its products. Broadly speaking, these high-value applications share the same problem: they are all high-stakes, which means they are very sensitive to errors. Mistakes made by apps that produce code, drive cars, or identify cancerous masses on chest X-rays are extremely consequential.

Some businesses may be insensitive to those consequences. Air Canada replaced its human customer service staff with chatbots that just lied to passengers, stealing hundreds of dollars from them in the process. But the process for getting your money back after you are defrauded by Air Canada's chatbot is so onerous that only one passenger has bothered to go through it, spending ten weeks exhausting all of Air Canada's internal review mechanisms before fighting his case for weeks more at the regulator:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/air-canada-s-chatbot-gave-a-b-c-man-the-wrong-information-now-the-airline-has-to-pay-for-the-mistake-1.6769454

There's never just one ant. If this guy was defrauded by an AC chatbot, so were hundreds or thousands of other fliers. Air Canada doesn't have to pay them back. Air Canada is tacitly asserting that, as the country's flagship carrier and near-monopolist, it is too big to fail and too big to jail, which means it's too big to care.

Air Canada shows that for some business customers, AI doesn't need to be able to do a worker's job in order to be a smart purchase: a chatbot can replace a worker, fail to their worker's job, and still save the company money on balance.

I can't predict whether the world's sociopathic monopolists are numerous and powerful enough to keep the lights on for AI companies through leases for automation systems that let them commit consequence-free free fraud by replacing workers with chatbots that serve as moral crumple-zones for furious customers:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563219304029

But even stipulating that this is sufficient, it's intrinsically unstable. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, and the mass replacement of humans with high-speed fraud software seems likely to stoke the already blazing furnace of modern antitrust:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Of course, the AI companies have their own answer to this conundrum. A high-stakes/high-value customer can still fire workers and replace them with AI – they just need to hire fewer, cheaper workers to supervise the AI and monitor it for "hallucinations." This is called the "human in the loop" solution.

The human in the loop story has some glaring holes. From a worker's perspective, serving as the human in the loop in a scheme that cuts wage bills through AI is a nightmare – the worst possible kind of automation.

Let's pause for a little detour through automation theory here. Automation can augment a worker. We can call this a "centaur" – the worker offloads a repetitive task, or one that requires a high degree of vigilance, or (worst of all) both. They're a human head on a robot body (hence "centaur"). Think of the sensor/vision system in your car that beeps if you activate your turn-signal while a car is in your blind spot. You're in charge, but you're getting a second opinion from the robot.

Likewise, consider an AI tool that double-checks a radiologist's diagnosis of your chest X-ray and suggests a second look when its assessment doesn't match the radiologist's. Again, the human is in charge, but the robot is serving as a backstop and helpmeet, using its inexhaustible robotic vigilance to augment human skill.

That's centaurs. They're the good automation. Then there's the bad automation: the reverse-centaur, when the human is used to augment the robot.

Amazon warehouse pickers stand in one place while robotic shelving units trundle up to them at speed; then, the haptic bracelets shackled around their wrists buzz at them, directing them pick up specific items and move them to a basket, while a third automation system penalizes them for taking toilet breaks or even just walking around and shaking out their limbs to avoid a repetitive strain injury. This is a robotic head using a human body – and destroying it in the process.

An AI-assisted radiologist processes fewer chest X-rays every day, costing their employer more, on top of the cost of the AI. That's not what AI companies are selling. They're offering hospitals the power to create reverse centaurs: radiologist-assisted AIs. That's what "human in the loop" means.

This is a problem for workers, but it's also a problem for their bosses (assuming those bosses actually care about correcting AI hallucinations, rather than providing a figleaf that lets them commit fraud or kill people and shift the blame to an unpunishable AI).

Humans are good at a lot of things, but they're not good at eternal, perfect vigilance. Writing code is hard, but performing code-review (where you check someone else's code for errors) is much harder – and it gets even harder if the code you're reviewing is usually fine, because this requires that you maintain your vigilance for something that only occurs at rare and unpredictable intervals:

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773779967521780169

But for a coding shop to make the cost of an AI pencil out, the human in the loop needs to be able to process a lot of AI-generated code. Replacing a human with an AI doesn't produce any savings if you need to hire two more humans to take turns doing close reads of the AI's code.

This is the fatal flaw in robo-taxi schemes. The "human in the loop" who is supposed to keep the murderbot from smashing into other cars, steering into oncoming traffic, or running down pedestrians isn't a driver, they're a driving instructor. This is a much harder job than being a driver, even when the student driver you're monitoring is a human, making human mistakes at human speed. It's even harder when the student driver is a robot, making errors at computer speed:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

This is why the doomed robo-taxi company Cruise had to deploy 1.5 skilled, high-paid human monitors to oversee each of its murderbots, while traditional taxis operate at a fraction of the cost with a single, precaratized, low-paid human driver:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The vigilance problem is pretty fatal for the human-in-the-loop gambit, but there's another problem that is, if anything, even more fatal: the kinds of errors that AIs make.

Foundationally, AI is applied statistics. An AI company trains its AI by feeding it a lot of data about the real world. The program processes this data, looking for statistical correlations in that data, and makes a model of the world based on those correlations. A chatbot is a next-word-guessing program, and an AI "art" generator is a next-pixel-guessing program. They're drawing on billions of documents to find the most statistically likely way of finishing a sentence or a line of pixels in a bitmap:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

This means that AI doesn't just make errors – it makes subtle errors, the kinds of errors that are the hardest for a human in the loop to spot, because they are the most statistically probable ways of being wrong. Sure, we notice the gross errors in AI output, like confidently claiming that a living human is dead:

https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/according-to-chatgpt-im-dead

But the most common errors that AIs make are the ones we don't notice, because they're perfectly camouflaged as the truth. Think of the recurring AI programming error that inserts a call to a nonexistent library called "huggingface-cli," which is what the library would be called if developers reliably followed naming conventions. But due to a human inconsistency, the real library has a slightly different name. The fact that AIs repeatedly inserted references to the nonexistent library opened up a vulnerability – a security researcher created a (inert) malicious library with that name and tricked numerous companies into compiling it into their code because their human reviewers missed the chatbot's (statistically indistinguishable from the the truth) lie:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

For a driving instructor or a code reviewer overseeing a human subject, the majority of errors are comparatively easy to spot, because they're the kinds of errors that lead to inconsistent library naming – places where a human behaved erratically or irregularly. But when reality is irregular or erratic, the AI will make errors by presuming that things are statistically normal.

These are the hardest kinds of errors to spot. They couldn't be harder for a human to detect if they were specifically designed to go undetected. The human in the loop isn't just being asked to spot mistakes – they're being actively deceived. The AI isn't merely wrong, it's constructing a subtle "what's wrong with this picture"-style puzzle. Not just one such puzzle, either: millions of them, at speed, which must be solved by the human in the loop, who must remain perfectly vigilant for things that are, by definition, almost totally unnoticeable.

This is a special new torment for reverse centaurs – and a significant problem for AI companies hoping to accumulate and keep enough high-value, high-stakes customers on their books to weather the coming trough of disillusionment.

This is pretty grim, but it gets grimmer. AI companies have argued that they have a third line of business, a way to make money for their customers beyond automation's gifts to their payrolls: they claim that they can perform difficult scientific tasks at superhuman speed, producing billion-dollar insights (new materials, new drugs, new proteins) at unimaginable speed.

However, these claims – credulously amplified by the non-technical press – keep on shattering when they are tested by experts who understand the esoteric domains in which AI is said to have an unbeatable advantage. For example, Google claimed that its Deepmind AI had discovered "millions of new materials," "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge," constituting "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity":

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

It was a hoax. When independent material scientists reviewed representative samples of these "new materials," they concluded that "no new materials have been discovered" and that not one of these materials was "credible, useful and novel":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

As Brian Merchant writes, AI claims are eerily similar to "smoke and mirrors" – the dazzling reality-distortion field thrown up by 17th century magic lantern technology, which millions of people ascribed wild capabilities to, thanks to the outlandish claims of the technology's promoters:

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-really-is-smoke-and-mirrors

The fact that we have a four-hundred-year-old name for this phenomenon, and yet we're still falling prey to it is frankly a little depressing. And, unlucky for us, it turns out that AI therapybots can't help us with this – rather, they're apt to literally convince us to kill ourselves:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkadgm/man-dies-by-suicide-after-talking-with-ai-chatbot-widow-says

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[springtrappd]

kellen goff (voice of glamrock freddy, the daycare attendant/sun/moon and funtime freddy) has spoken out on twitter re: ai replicas of his voice. if you continue to produce or consume ai reproductions of his work, you are not only explicitly violating his boundaries, but you are contributing to a culture that will make it more difficult for him to continue to gain sustainable work in the future. now that he's made them known, let's please respect his wishes regarding the matter.

full text of thread beneath the cut for brevity:

I do not consent to any AI reproduction of my voice. I respectfully ask any who provide AI TTS services to delete the voices of those who didn't consent. Will that stop anyone? Hell no. Why would it? It's not illegal. It should be, but it's not. Hopefully someday, but not yet. People are a-ok violating others. They'll justify it any way they can. We've seen it time and time again, and we've seen that again today. I'm so sorry, Erica. You did not deserve the onslaught that came from setting up a boundary. Maybe one day, we'll get legislation on it. Maybe not. In the meantime, let me make this clear: If you use AI text to speech that originated from a VA that never consented to it, my opinion of you will lower significantly. If that doesn't matter to you, oh well. Can't stop you. But if you respect what we do and how hard we had and have to work to get here and keep it going, please reconsider. It really makes us uncomfortable, and encourages companies to devalue what we do more and more. Look at Secret Invasion. It's already happening. You can say no. I already see Glamrock Freddy covers of songs on YouTube and TikTok. You may think it's harmless fun, but in the long run, you're going to see more and more VAs disappear. If that's your goal, well done. You found the way. If it isn't, I encourage you to help us push against it. Anyway, that's my word on it. I tried to state it respectfully as I could. I'm a firm believer in treating others the way you want to be treated. We'll see how many hold that same principle I guess.

[shironezuninja]

I’ll be needing more Self Care days away from posting collages. This weekend was supposed to be Laundry chores if I had enough quarters for the dryers. With other Adulting stuff that’s got me tense, I hope I finish the Detective Pikachu Returns game before the anniversary of its release date which also unleashed the events of the ongoing stupid war.

[puzzleheaded-pool-96]

text to speech AI voice for those who don't want to read all this (music by Mackeerre).

The Horse's prophecy.

The Abbot.

Throughout the prophecy we keep being told “the Abbot, will know”. So let’s start with who the Abbot is. Its the “Fiddler”. You know, the character at the end of all the credits, who stands there in a temple with a mosaic of the prophecy of “the rising three” behind her (I'm a little embarrassed that it took me so long to figure that one out.)

First part of Horse's prophecy.

“Thine faeder, laid bare... desiccated on the rocks, by thy hand... the Abbot, will know”.

This refers to Door. Laid bare. Is him being exposed, maybe his anti-explosion suit is destroyed. Desiccated on the rocks, most likely him being drained of his blood by a vampire, the rock being an altar, Door could be part of a sacrifice. or maybe in a fight he suffers an explosion, bleeding under the rubble, perhaps losing a hand, like in the mosaic. By thy hand... the Abbot, will know. For the longest time I thought these things would be Boy's fault, that he would be responsible for this incident. But the ellipsis are just a pause in the sentence, By thy hand the Abbot, will know. Boy is the one who will inform the Abbot, perhaps so she can save Door.

Second part of Horse's prophecy.

“Of two, one falls... one rises. Damnation. The third eye opens. His suet will feed and warm her gullet. The Abbot, will know”.

The two being, Marckus and Kitten. one falls... one rises. The best bet is, Marckus falling off the path of the Mage, and instead making a deal with the “Thing” from 18 years ago, perhaps to have the power to save one of the Hunters. About Kitten. I have the impression that he was the "runt of the litter" among his siblings. But with Big D's training, Kitten will rise to lead the hunters'. The third eye opens. probably referring to the powers Marckus will obtain. His suet will feed and warm her gullet. I'm betting on that being Kitten. His first experience with the supernatural, was with a Nagaraja devouring someone. So it would be thematic for him to relive this event.

Third part of Horse's prophecy.

“The patriarch, in mastering luna, ends hamstrung... he will wish death upon his flesh... but no mercy shall be given, for none he hath gave”.

Who else would be the Patriarch besides the Big Daddy? (Door doesn't count, because he's already going to be desiccated, give the guy a break.) Mastering luna, is referring to Big D greatest achievements, gathering of knowledge and victory over the world of darkness. Ends hamstrung. Is about him getting incapacitated (we are getting golden throne part 2).

Ok. I know people have “strong opinions” about TTS theories, but hear me out for a moment. To begin with, the story is always trying to incapacitate him from the action. Two. The prophetic dream with the Blue Man warns him of change, of growth, of the world of the fathers becoming the world of the sons. And you heard the tantrum Big D had with Marckus at the end of the Vampiric Powers Audiology. So only with him paralyzed, is that the sons will be able to follow their own paths. And last. Before Horse begins to tell the prophecy. Boy has a vision of the future, where he sees Big D with his other sons in kitten's house. I envision the other sons coming to check on his health, or to help with the rest of the mission on his instead.

He will wish death upon his flesh. Even with the idea of ​​him not being able to fight the supernatural anymore, him wishing for death, doesn't seem like the Big D we're used to. So much so that I wondered if flash doesn't have another meaning here. Like when parents refer to their children as their own flesh and blood. However, this idea does not fit with the next part. But no mercy shall be given, for none he hath gave. I know most people dismiss this part of the prophecy to be referring to Big D, since he showed Kevin mercy, but I believe it refers to a specific person in the past that he did not show mercy to.

One part that I don't see being discussed, is the missing of the phrase: the Abbot, will know. This is repeated throughout the prophecy, with only its absence being here. Perhaps implying that the Abbot will be the one responsible for this event.

Final part of Horse's prophecy.

“The rising three shall signal wars end. Woe and triumph. The Abbot, will know”.

“From them... bloodshed. Armageddon for all. Kine, Kindred, Garou, Milklings, Elohim. In the light, they all will (the prophecy is cut off)”.

To begin with, I think this part of the prophecy is backwards. It doesn't make sense to have Armageddon after the end of the war. One of the rising three will be Marckus or Kitten, depending on what vision you have for the second part of the prophecy. From them... bloodshed. Armageddon for all. I see this part implying that the Rising three will be responsible for starting Armageddon. Either by drawing first blood or by being injured themselves. After that, Horse reveals the members of this war, they being: humans, vampires, werewolves, changelings and/or demons and angels. Interesting that he refers to humans and changelings with derogatory terms. In the light, they all will. Fall? Be exposed? Anyway. I believe that light is a metaphor, for knowledge and revelation. Implying the end of their secrecy.

The end (finally).

So. What do you think? Do you have any theories, opinions, corrections or feelings about Horse's prophecy? in any case thank for hearing my rambling.

I made this post a few days ago on reddit and since then I've wanted to add a few things. I'd swap out "Fiddler" for "Black Hood Monk" (the figure that Embraces Fiddler). I'd point out that this prophecy starts with Boy seeing his family in a pool of blood and continues with Horse telling about his family and the blood that will be spilled. And last. I believe that “mastering Luna” refers to his knowledge and achievements in the “world of darkness” especially with the factor that we always see (regardless of the passing of days) the red full moon as a symbolic reminder of what world we are in.

[viridianriver]

So y'all wanted a second post on how to escape ~The Matrix~ after my last one, suggesting we were all unknowingly inside of it. (Not literal goo-pods, I'm referencing the movie more as an allegory for what AI has become - a surveillance and mass manipulation technology that turns us into parts of a profit generating machine.)

What Is The Matrix?

In the start of the film, Neo hides some money inside a hollowed out copy of Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation.

It's a philosophy book - apparently the whole cast of the film had to read it, and so did I. It's about the levels of abstraction from reality - or as philosophers call it, 'The Real'

There are levels to this abstraction. Perhaps a tree outside is real. (as real as anything can be) The word 'Tree' as a signifier to mean 'that green thing over there' is one level of abstraction from the real. A tree as a commodity in a market, say in the sense of investing in lumber futures, is even further abstracted. And it's possible to have concepts that have no remaining connection to the real - imagine a world where trees have died out but the word 'Tree' lives on in memory.

In this way of thinking, some of what we do in life is real. Eating, shitting, you get the idea. Some is more abstract, and is based on collective agreements of meaning. Say - money. You can't eat it, but we all agree that it can be exchanged for something you can eat. It is real because we all agree to play the game of pretend, together.

And generally - we aren't conscious of what level of abstraction we are operating in at any given moment. I sure wasn't until I started reading philosophy.

We carry our ideologies, pre-conceptions, past traumas and fears, and our 'reality' is filtered through all things.

This all seems very abstract, why should I care?

I'm going to use the word 'simulacrum' to describe the different levels of unreality. I'll give a few examples of simulacra from my own life - filters on my perception, formed through ideology and past experiences.

Money. We chase it, we desire it, in some ways we can't live without it. But it's an abstraction - the reality of money comes when it is exchanged for something material. And by reframing my want of money to a want of the things money can buy me? I realized a number of those things could be obtained without money, and I didn't need so much to be content.

Laws. Laws are threats by those in power. This is an abstraction - the reality of law comes with its enforcement. And by reframing my fear a potential fascist police state in reality - that their material resources are constrained in the same ways ours all are? I released that fear.

Power. This one is real abstract; it is often wielded not through violence but through the appearance of the capacity to do violence. (See the entire cold war.) I've always held a fear of those who have institutional power over me, since I've had experiences with that power being abused. However, I feel I've fallen for the oldest trick in the book - mistaking grandstanding for true power.

All the simulacra that are central to our lives are just that - concepts. We have agreed to bow before money, laws, and power. How much of that is based in the reality of those concepts, and how much is based in the ideology? It's - in effect - different for everyone. I'm more able to brush off the portrayed power of the police as a person who isn't regularly experiencing police violence. I'm more able to walk away from the accumulation of money after I have enough to put dinner on the table.

So - these concepts are an abstraction from reality. But through our collective agreement to abide by these concepts, we bring them forth into reality.

What does AI have to do with all this?

AI isn't the first technology to be used to spread belief systems or ideology; before AI we had books, newspapers, religious texts and rituals, song, speech. All these technologies were held tight by those in power. Books have been banned or burned. Printing presses have been restricted so only male authors can publish. Meetings of more than a few people at once have been banned. Religion and government often have gone hand in hand. Even the printers we use today have had code secretly implemented to print a faint identifying signature - lest anyone begins to distribute controversial literature. Governments have always had an interest in identifying and monitoring their population's speech.

Language, and the strategic use of it has always been a tool of control. Read 1984, Manufacturing Consent, or any military manual on strategic communications, misinformation, and disinformation if you don't believe me.

But AI is uniquely effective at several things.

Consolidating information and the tools to parse it at scale into the lands of a few extremely wealthy individuals. (Not counting true open source AI, which I don't believe any major company is truly developing - as much as they say they are)

Identifying and classifying individuals by existing ideology or traits, and then enabling targeted messaging towards those individuals - blocking the population into 'echo chambers' which can be divided and conquered with misinformation or disinformation.

Providing surveillence in a variety of ways, including facial recognition, textual analysis, geolocation analysis, purchasing pattern analysis, and threat analysis.

How Do I Leave?

Become aware of whether your thoughts are in reality, or if you're being used as a tool in someone else's game of money, power, and politics.

Write down a schedule of how you spend your day today, in as much detail as you can, and ask yourself these sorts of questions.

How did I learn to spend my time in this way? Who profits off of me spending my time in this way? Am I producing or consuming in this moment? If I am producing, do the fruits of my labor go to me or another? If I am consuming, am I nourished by what I am consuming? Am I being provoked into a reflexive emotional reaction? If so, for what ends?

You can't escape being a cog in someone else's machine entirely - but so much messaging in our lives encourages us to, whether that's ads telling us to consume, or the idea of the surveillence state telling us we have no right to a private life. Being mindful of these things and trying to claw back what hours, what energies, you can? It can be life changing.

How Do I Reduce My Exposure To Targeted Ideological Manipulation?

Get an adblocker. Set up your whole family with adblockers. I like ublock origin, or a pi-hole. The mechanisms of targeted advertising are also used for targeted political speech - see the social media manipulation Musk did leading up to the recent US election.

If you read the news at all, read the news critically, and read news from many countries. Seek out primary sources, on-the-ground video, not media filtered through the layer of propoganda and abstraction that secondary or tertiary sources report. (And seriously - check out the book Manufacturing Consent)

Read a great variety of books. Or listen to audiobooks. Philosophy, sociology, and history have been my favorites lately. There's some deep shit in there.

Speak to people face to face often, leave the phones elsewhere. (Did you see the news Apple's been recording us? creepy!) Speak to people with very different ideas than you - ones that might make you uncomfortable. Those in power take advantage of our fear of each other - to sub-divide us into ideological echo-chambers which can be turned against one-another.

Turn off your location. You're being tracked more than you know. (But also know that modern phones with non-removable batteries don't allow you to truly disable location, the gov't has tools to remotely turn on your phone's location services. Had that happen to me once when I called 911 to report a fire, my fairly 'locked down' phone was instantly triangulated with a combo of GPS, WI-FI adjacency, and cell tower proximity. )

Realize that fear of your neighbor is a tool of control. If you're exposed to messaging that tells you to fear those in your community, or messaging that causes your outrage-response, look critically at who is serving you that messaging, and why. (Y'all are probably being set up to fight each other to keep you too busy to look up.)

Write down your own guiding principles and beliefs. What do you have faith in? Ask yourself why they're important to you. And hold this close - I believe that if you hold a strong sense of self, you'll be less susceptible to manipulation.

And maybe watch the Matrix, it's a damn good movie. But as always - think critically!

[brittanyearnestauthor]

Writing Tips for Beginners

Writing can feel intimidating when you're just starting out. There’s a lot to consider, but taking things step by step can make the process much smoother. This guide walks you through essential tips to help you navigate your writing journey with confidence.

1. Why Do You Want to Write?

The first step in becoming a writer is understanding your motivation. Ask yourself:

- Do you want to write entertaining stories with no deeper lessons?

- Are you passionate about highlighting important issues to educate readers?

- Do you wish to share valuable life lessons and inspire others?

- Or is it a mix of all these reasons?

Defining your “why” will shape what and how you write, giving your work purpose and direction.

2. Choosing a Writing Style

Your writing style is a key part of storytelling. Start by exploring:

- Third Person: "Jake went to school late this morning because he forgot to set his alarm clock."

- First Person: "I can't believe I forgot to set my alarm clock last night. Now, I'm late for school."

Both styles are powerful, but picking one to focus on as a beginner can help you find your groove. Mastery of both can come later.

3. Choosing a Genre

Think about what you love to read or watch—those genres can inspire your writing. Your familiarity with the genre will guide you in crafting your story, but always ensure your ideas are original. Copying someone else’s work risks losing the respect and trust of your audience.

4. Brainstorming Ideas

Brainstorming is where creativity starts. Keep a notebook or document of ideas—no matter how wild they seem. Even ideas that don’t fit one story might inspire another in the future.

5. Creating a Writing Schedule

Life can be busy, but carving out time for writing is essential. Even five minutes a day can build momentum and keep creativity flowing. Little by little, it all adds up.

6. Making a Plot Outline

Outlining your plot keeps your story organized and prevents excessive rewrites. A simple outline looks like this:

- Jane goes to the library.

- Jane grabs her favorite book.

- Jane meets the librarian.

This allows for creativity while keeping the story on track.

7. Creating Character Sheets

Characters are the heart of your story. Use character sheets to note their:

- Features

- Personality

- Behaviors

- Interests

This ensures your characters are unique and memorable, reducing confusion for readers.

8. Choosing Writing Software

Pick software that suits your needs. Options include:

- Microsoft Word: Reliable and feature-rich for writing, editing, and formatting.

- Google Docs: Free and convenient, but dependent on internet access.

- Open-Source Software: Free alternatives, though they may have limited features.

9. Writing Tools

Leverage tools like Grammarly to catch errors and refine your work. While AI tools can aid editing and polishing, remember they're there to support—not replace—your creativity. Work smarter, not harder!

10. Editing

Editing doesn’t have to be daunting. Take breaks to see your work with fresh eyes and use tools like Grammarly or text-to-speech programs to catch errors. Rewrite or cut scenes that don’t serve the story’s purpose.

11. Exploring Publishing Options

You have two main routes:

- Traditional Publishing: Requires pitching your manuscript but offers professional backing—though it can take time.

- Self-Publishing: Faster and gives you full control. Platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) offer free marketing tools like giveaways and discounts.

Research to find what fits your goals.

Conclusion

Writing takes time, patience, and a willingness to learn. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to starting and succeeding on your writing journey. Happy writing!

[transformers-synergize]

Hi. I wanted to ask if I could make a dub of your comic on my youtube channel.Don't worry, you would be credited and I leave a link to your channel. Here some info thought if you agree:

-First and foremost,I'm not professional.Most of stuff I post on my channel are experimental to test my voice acting skills.

-I'm female and I have thin voice,which is often a problem when I do VA for guys.I use voice generated AI to help me with this.

-I'm not Native english speaker and my accent is mostly reveal this

-I don't expect payment.Like stated before,I do this mostly for fun and practice so it's for free

I understant when you don't agree.I just really like your comic and I would like to introduce it to other people.

Go for it sounds awesome I love to see it. Don't worry about payment You're also 100% allowed to monetize your video and keep all the profits.

just ask you don't use AI voice/ text to speech. I think this technology has its place but I'd rather have real people perform, especially for characters with more messy speaking styles like spikes with frequent ums and uhs and often inarticulate sentences or characters who have a tendency to get very emotional like cliffjumper, I rather a inexperienced voice actor try and fail to potray those emotions than a ai voice with a flat tone,

I rather you attempt the male characters voices yourself, or find someone to collaborate with. There are a lot of amateur voice actors who are always looking for something to work on. the ability to collaborate with other vas is a great non-acting skill to have in voice acting. idk if you would like to collab with other people, but I'll put this out here anyway if you're a dude with a dude-sounding voice and wanna possibly collaborate on an unofficial dub comment below

also, within lore, the cybertronian characters are all genderless, so even if a bot is masculine presenting in design and behavior to humans, doesn't mean they need to sound like a guy. I mean, I have thought of possibly putting together an official dub in the future and planned to let anyone of any gender, accent, or tone try out for any of the cybertronian characters and I would pick roles purely based on the performance, and how well they capture the character energy ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[readingsquotes]

A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News. The data show that Meta has complied with 94% of takedown requests issued by Israel since October 7, 2023. Israel is the biggest originator of takedown requests globally by far, and Meta has followed suit—widening the net of posts it automatically removes, and creating what can be called the largest mass censorship operation in modern history.

Government requests for takedowns generally focus on posts made by citizens inside that government’s borders, Meta insiders said. What makes Israel’s campaign unique is its success in censoring speech in many countries outside of Israel. What’s more, Israel's censorship project will echo well into the future, insiders said, as the AI program Meta is currently training how to moderate content will base future decisions on the successful takedown of content critical of Israel’s genocide.

...The documents indicate that the vast majority of Israel’s requests—95%—fall under Meta’s “terrorism” or “violence and incitement” categories. And Israel’s requests have overwhelmingly targeted users from Arab and Muslim-majority nations in a massive effort to silence criticism of Israel.

Multiple independent sources inside Meta confirmed the authenticity of the information provided by the whistleblowers. The data also show that Meta removed over 90,000 posts to comply with TDRs submitted by the Israeli government in an average of 30 seconds.

...All of the Israeli government’s TDRs post-October 7th contain the exact same complaint text, according to the leaked information, regardless of the substance of the underlying content being challenged.

Remove, Strike, Suspend

Within Meta, several key leadership positions are filled by figures with personal connections to the Israeli government. The Integrity Organization is run by Guy Rosen, a former Israeli military official who served in the Israeli military’s signals intelligence unit, Unit 8200. Rosen was the founder of Onavo, a web analytics and VPN firm that then-Facebook acquired in October 2013.

..Despite Meta’s awareness of Israel’s aggressive censorship tactics for at least seven years, according to Meta whistleblowers, the company has failed to curb the abuse. Instead, one said, the company “actively provided the Israeli government with a legal entry-point for carrying out its mass censorship campaign.”

[garecc]

What is word steam?

Word steam is a company that makes "ai generated" audio books. Many of the "audiobooks" on their website are in fact, fanfictions scraped from ao3 and reuploaded without the authors concent.

How do I check if mine has been uploaded?

Go to the website and search your pen name, or your fandom name. I found many popular magnus archives fanfics for example when breifly searching.

*****WEBSITE IS DOWN, FOR NOW.*****

Legally, what next?

Well, OTW legal has been informed of the situation and so far as i can tell, have not responded yet. Equally unfortunately, the creator of the website has responded and...

I will let you all be the judge of these responses:

Reddit:

Hey everybody, the person behind word stream here: I am dyslexic and built word stream to help other students like me who have dyslexia, ADHD, vision challenges, concussions, or anxiety to access fan-fiction, because for us, reading with our eyes can be very challenging and there are no audiobooks for fan fiction typically.  Word Stream is free for anyone to use. There is a paid plan for ppl who want to use high quality text to speech which is priced at the minimum amount we can to cover server/gpu costs to power the text to speech. The next iteration will also include free text to speech but with a lower quality bar. I apologize to anyone who saw this and was upset this in no way is our intention. We support all valid take down notices and will always make it right if you reach out to us with the name of your work. support@word-stream.com Please email me if we have a peace of work that is yours  you don't want up there and I will take it down immediately support@word-stream.com A future release will also add the ability to tip authors so writers can make money not from selling the works but via tips from grateful readers, the ability for authors to build and communicate with an email list of readers, ability for authors to see retention graphs of where users drop off during reading, and abilities to authors to easily manage their works. We are strong supporters of  second language learners (non native speakers of English), and of users who love fan fiction but who have a job that makes their hands/eyes busy but ears free. Once again I apologize for a beta product that got more attention that it had any right to before it was complete and for the clearly tone deaf wording which we are fixing to make sure communication is better about take down notices. Warmly, Cliff 

Tumblr: from @cliffweitzman

(in a reply) Hey everybody, the person behind word stream here. Please email me if we have a peace of work that is yours you don't want up there and I will take it down immediately support@word-stream.com I am dyslexic and built word stream to help other students like me who have dyslexia, adhd, low vision, concussions, anxiety, who are second language learners, or who also love listening to fan fiction but have a job that makes their hands/eyes busy but ears free. Word Stream is free for anyone to use. The next iteration will also include free text to speech, we have a paid tier for ppl who want to use high quality text to speech which is priced at the minimum amount we can to cover server/gpu costs to power the text to speech. (in a reply to a reply) I apologize to anyone who saw this and was upset this in no way is our intention. We support all valid take down notices and will always make it right if you reach out to us with the name of your work. support@word-stream.com

In these messages, it says to email "support@word-stream.com" - i would caution anyone from doing this immediately, and perhaps wait for OTW Legal to respond to the situation.

you can ALSO file a takedown, which other people in the word steam tag have explained how to do

as writing this, the website is down because of a dns error. i dont really know what that means.

when/if the website goes back up, i HIGHLY recommend checking to see if your fic has been reuploaded.