Month: August 2024

Enlarge (credit: Ole_CNX via Getty Images)

On Thursday, OpenAI released the "system card" for ChatGPT's new GPT-4o AI model that details model limitations and safety testing procedures. Among other examples, the document reveals that in rare occurrences during testing, the model's Advanced Voice Mode unintentionally imitated users' voices without permission. Currently, OpenAI has safeguards in place that prevent this from happening, but the instance reflects the growing complexity of safely architecting with an AI chatbot that could potentially imitate any voice from a small clip.

Advanced Voice Mode is a feature of ChatGPT that allows users to have spoken conversations with the AI assistant.

In a section of the GPT-4o system card titled "Unauthorized voice generation," OpenAI details an episode where a noisy input somehow prompted the model to suddenly imitate the user's voice. "Voice generation can also occur in non-adversarial situations, such as our use of that ability to generate voices for ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode," OpenAI writes. "During testing, we also observed rare instances where the model would unintentionally generate an output emulating the user’s voice."

Enlarge / Dodge doesn't want to be accused of building a boring EV. (credit: Dodge)

Electric motors have many advantages over internal combustion engines, including the fact that they don't waste a lot of their power as sound energy. So quiet are electric vehicles, in fact, that federal vehicle safety regulations require EVs (and hybrids) to make a certain amount of noise at lower speeds to warn vulnerable road users like blind or visually impaired pedestrians.

Almost all of those cars end up sounding like a choir of depressed angels, a phrase memorably coined by either Richard Porter or Jonny Smith on the Smith and Sniff podcast. That's not the case with the forthcoming electric Dodge Charger, however. When it first broke cover in March, we learned that the electric Charger would feature something called a "Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust" to give it some aural character. Now, thanks to the video from Dodge embedded here, we can all hear what that sounds like in practice:

The Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust—the name refers to a Dodge logo— combines various chambers underneath the Charger's body with some woofers and mid-range speakers, all driven by a dedicated 600 W amplifier. The system is also designed to transmit vibrations into the chassis through elastomeric bushings, mimicking an internal combustion engine and its motor mounts.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

Antitrust law professors aren't impressed by Elon Musk's lawsuit alleging a supposed X advertising boycott amounts to an antitrust violation. Based on the initial complaint filed by Musk's X Corp., it looks like "a very weak case," Vanderbilt Law School Associate Dean for Research Rebecca Haw Allensworth told Ars.

"Given how difficult this will be to win, I would call it an unusual strategy," she said.

The lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and several large corporations says that the alleged boycott is "a naked restraint of trade without countervailing benefits to competition or consumers." The "collective action among competing advertisers to dictate brand safety standards to be applied by social media platforms shortcuts the competitive process and allows the collective views of a group of advertisers with market power to override the interests of consumers," X claims.

Enlarge / This is one method of burning a disc. (credit: 1001slide / Getty Images)

We noted earlier this week that time seems to have run out for Apple's venerable SuperDrive, which was the last (OEM) option available for folks who still needed to read or create optical media on modern Macs. Andrew's write-up got me thinking: When was the last time any Ars staffers actually burned an optical disc?

Lee Hutchinson, Senior Technology Editor

It used to be one of the most common tasks I'd do with a computer. As a child of the '90s, my college years were spent filling and then lugging around giant binders stuffed with home-burned CDs in my car to make sure I had exactly the right music on hand for any possible eventuality. The discs in these binders were all labeled with names like "METAL MIX XVIII" and "ULTRA MIX IV" and "MY MIX XIX," and part of the fun was trying to remember which songs I'd put on which disc. (There was always a bit of danger that I'd put on "CAR RIDE JAMS XV" to set the mood for a Friday night trip to the movies with all the boys, but I should have popped on "CAR RIDE JAMS XIV" because "CAR RIDE JAMS XV" opens with Britney Spears' "Lucky"—look, it's a good song, and she cries in her lonely heart, OK?!—thus setting the stage for an evening of ridicule. Those were just the kinds of risks we took back in those ancient days.)

It took a while to try to figure out what the very last time I burned a disc was, but I've narrowed it down to two possibilities. The first (and less likely) option is that the last disc I burned was a Windows 7 install disc because I've had a Windows 7 install disc sitting in a paper envelope on my shelf for so long that I can't remember how it got there. The label is in my handwriting, and it has a CD key written on it. Some quick searching shows I have the same CD key stored in 1Password with an "MSDN/Technet" label on it, which means I probably downloaded the image from good ol' TechNet, to which I maintained an active subscription for years until MS finally killed the affordable version.