Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2025 September 14

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September 14

AI voice

Because I'm gullible, it took me a while to figure out (and I'm still not sure) that the narration is being done by a bot rather than an actual human. Is there a quick way to tell? Is it obvious to others here? The content seems to be Wikipedia articles probably munched by an LLM.

This one on a different youtube channel running a similar scam, uses an English accent. Does it sound authentic at all? I listened to a different episode last night and it fooled me for quite a while, before repetitions in the script and unbelieveability of some parts of the story tipped me off. So I think that channel is pure AI slop. I feel like I suffered some kind of brain damage from it since the voice stuck with me for some hours afterwards and I had some weird dreams afterwards. I'll presumably recover, but I'm saying this to caution against anyone listening to too much of it. It's crap anyway. I'm asking this question in the hope of not being caught out so easily. Thanks 2601:644:8581:75B0:B9C9:35BE:BB0E:CC0C (talk) 21:42, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

Added: This one is definitely a human produced video, very meticulously produced in fact. It's about developing an AI bot to play a video game. The narration is in English with a French accent. The script is seemingly human written. But now I'm wondering whether that is also a bot voice. Any clues? Thanks. 2601:644:8581:75B0:B9C9:35BE:BB0E:CC0C (talk) 22:30, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

The scripts of these videos were written by human intelligences but turned into speech using text-to-speech software. The stories are real and well researched. For that about the criminal wartime spy, see our article Eddie Chapman. For the second video, see on Wikipedia articles like Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, Robert S. Johnson and Adolf Galland, and books such as P-47 Thunderbolt vs German Flak Defenses: Western Europe 1943–45 and Thunderbolt to War: An American Fighter Pilot in England. The YouTube page states: "Audio tracks for some languages were automatically generated."  ​‑‑Lambiam 02:26, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Somebody here has a suggestion for preventing or avoiding auto-dubbing.  Card Zero  (talk) 14:03, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

The one about Eddie Chapman was not too bad, but the one about the P-47 was definitely LLM slop. This was obvious from the way various rhetorical devices were repeated in the narration (the devices work once or twice but not 5+ times in the same narrative). Same with the one about the food in US POW camps served to German WW2 prisoners. Both were also ridiculous triumphalism too. German prisoners of war in the United States is much better. In fact there's a shorter one about the P-47 using an abridged version of the same script, and with a different speaking voice. 2601:644:8581:75B0:27E9:7218:F197:FD31 (talk) 21:12, 17 September 2025 (UTC)