Common Voice - Donate your voice to teach machines how people speak | Mozilla

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨otter@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/en/about

It’s frustrating when you’re not understood — especially when you’re trying to speak to Siri, Alexa, or another internet-connected device.

Voice datasets that power voice recognition services are owned by a handful of major companies, and they can wildly underrepresent the voices of non-dominant accents, Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, disabled people and gender marginalised people. In fact, for people speaking other global languages - there may be no datasets at all.

That’s why Mozilla launched Common Voice — the world’s largest public voice database, powered by the voices of volunteer contributors. Our goal is to teach machines how real people speak.

Today, we’re asking you to contribute to Common Voice, but we want you to choose how you’ll do it. Will you donate your voice to one of our Common Voice language datasets? Or will you make a $34 donation to Mozilla to support projects like this to reclaim the internet? (Or both!)

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Mozilla: "We'd like to build a dataset of underrepresented languages and accents so that voice recognition works for everyone. It'll be under an open license."

Most of this thread: "GIVE ME MONEY."

Sigh. As soon as it turned out that AI training data was "worth something" everyone turned into a money-grubbing mercenary.

source
- gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m not sure why there is so much anti-Mozilla hate. I know they’re far from perfect but they do an awful lot for the open source world. Having an open database for voice training seems like something that the world can use to do some good.
  
  source
  - angrymouse@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Because everyone knows better how to do open source, and these ppl are usually right ideally, but when you apply some concepts you can starve to death. Much of what mozilla does are not ideal, but are very good, and the only option of things we need today, not in 20-30 years.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - Deckweiss@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Personally, because they are shady, extremely profitable and yet ask for donations.
    
    …locals.com/…/firefox-money-investigating-the-biz…
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
paskalivichi@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not today skynet

source
RobotToaster@mander.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Mozilla pay their CEO $5m a year, yet they want donations.

source
helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
No I don’t think I will

source
- vanveen@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Why Google pays these money to Mozilla?
  
  source
  - helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Well it’s primarily to have Google as the default search.
    
    But I assume it’s also because it’s their nearest competition and the situation is so bad that they’re trying to avoid anti-trust concerns.
    
    source
starbreaker@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Mozilla wants data that can be used to impersonate me? They can fucking well pay me for it.

source
- FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  So, wait, you're fine with Mozilla impersonating you as long as you get a little money in the process?
  
  Not that this is what Mozilla wants this data for, mind you, I'm just puzzled by this place you've jumped to.
  
  source
  - starbreaker@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Funny that you think $10,000,000 is "a little money", but whatever.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
crystal@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Why would black or gender marginalised people have a different voice?

source
- them@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Because the genetics that build the vocal tract could be different, which in simple terms could mean a change in pitch. There are also more cultural differences such as speech cadence, accent, and inflection.
  
  source
- Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Technically there are different dialects and a lot of unique slang, idioms and specific descriptive words.
  
  In the trans and non-binary community for instance there’s a lot of terms regarding how people identify and express themselves that unless you know the actual function of how they work aren’t easily indistinguishable from slurs to outsiders. Take “Femboy” and (please forgive me mods) “Shemale”. The former is a perfectly socially acceptable description of a guy (cis or otherwise) whose gender expression is very feminine…the latter is a slur that places emphasis on the birth sex characteristics of a trans woman and implies heavily they are guys just pretending to be women and the term originates from the porn industry that fetishizes trans women.
  
  You also have the usage of neo-pronouns. In languages with more gendered components than English sometimes what words are chosen either reflects the gender of the speaker or the person being addressed or objects can be given a gendered connotation. Some languages are actually very gendered and the usage non-binary folk using those languages make whole new conventions. English speakers whine a remarkable amount over they/them singular pronouns are confusing but ain’t seen nothing. A lot of places your job title and status has no neutral gendered term or culturally there are sentence structures that differ down entirely binary gender lines. Are you latino or latina? Guess we need a new word… Latinx!
  
  source
- Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Have you seen how (even if stereotypical) black folks talk vs white folks (in media)?
  Just turn on GTA 5 and listen a bit to Lamar and Franklin talking in missions.
  So much slang is in there.
  
  source
- burliman@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Dude, I clicked on the link pretty excited to volunteer. I have a professional mic, a little time, and a decent voice. The first thing that greets me is “Voice datasets also underrepresent: non-English speakers, people of colour, disabled people, women and LGBTQIA+ people.”
  
  Well, I’m none of those. So maybe they don’t want my donation, or I’d spend time and they wouldn’t use my recordings… Sort of a letdown.
  
  source
- Destraight@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Right? Like we all are made the same, inside and out.
  
  source
FanciestPants@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Nice try, Ursula

source