I have not been with MIT in years. I had a successful exit not too long after graduation, and I've been spending most of my earnings on this project.
As an undergrad, I was completely broke. I figured that keeping the project free to use was the best thing I could possibly do with my research as I continued to work on it.
>Can't you continue/do your research without a public website?
Yes, but the website has multiple purposes. It serves as a proof of concept of a platform that allows anyone to create content, even if they can't hire someone to voice their projects.
It also demonstrates the progress of my research in a far more engaging manner - by being able to use the actual model, you can discover things about it that even I wasn't aware of (such as getting characters to make gasping noises or moans by placing commas in between certain phonemes).
It also doesn't let me get away with picking and choosing the best results and showing off only the ones that work (which I believe is a big problem endemic in ML today - it's disingenuous and misleading). Being able to interact with the model with no filter allows the user to judge exactly how good the current work is at face value.
Despite others here, I personally certainly think this is admirable. I've played with your models a long time ago with some colleagues of mine and we were all shocked how good it was, and that it was free.
I'm no stranger to passion projects, I have a lot of respect for people like you. This is great stuff.
Thank you for the kind words. I know that HN is a tough crowd to please (I myself as well), so I hope that my next update will be well worth working for.
The Rise model in particular is amazingly good quality. I pranked a friend with some text from her a few minutes ago and he chastised me for wasting my money on hiring voice actors just to troll him.
