Linden Labs Forces BonnieBots To End Free Text To Speech (TTS) Service in Secondlife


In late May 2024, Linden Labs presented BonnieBots with an ultimatum - make their free and popular TTS Secondlife service only available to Premium Plus users, or be banned.  The TTS was based on the free audio uploads that come with Premium Plus.

BB chose the former and shut down the service on May 28, so unfortunately the popular codes we were giving away to make avatars and robots do TTS audio output are, at least for now, dead.  I'm hoping that the service returns in some form soon!  People in Secondlife were using TTS for disabled accessibility and for education and thus LL has gone against these bene and pro bono uses of the Metaverse.

We (SJARW on Marketplace) will likely start to offer a device giving inworld-for-pay text-to-audio service in mid-2024. Probably L$1 per TTS request. Note that SJARW is unaffiliated with BonnieBots although I am supportive of the inworld services they are providing.

A corollary of this is - uploads are not unlimited under Premium Plus - some large number of them (around 2M apparently) can get you threatened with banning!  So don't let anyone tell you that you get unlimited uploads with Premium Plus.

Twitter commentary here.   Discord here.

UPDATE - my media-based system is on Marketplace! Check out TTS2 - New Text to Audio Speech System! (johnsonbots.blogspot.com) and Second Life Marketplace - TTS2 - Text To Audio Speech System



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Play With The Bots Over At The West Mill Store!

Image
There are so many things to do with the bots over in West Mill .  It can be a bit intimidating to figure out how to control them so here is a little guide to how you can play with them. There are two general types of bots .  First, there are animesh objects which you can sit on like furniture (Ava, Ivy, Ora, Uma, Cal, Fox "sexbots"). If you can sit on it, it's an animesh object! The second type are "alt-bots" which are botified avatars which can sit on furniture - if you use your viewer to look for avatars, they are the avatars. The main type of alt-bot I want to focus on here are the ones using submissive controller -type AI (Traci, Ivy Wearable, Uma Wearable, Ora Wearable, Ava Wearable). Around the store there are also alt-bots like Abby with a bubble floating over their heads - those are  collar rental bots using an ALICE/AIML AI system and SVL - fun but different from the animeshes and wearables which this article is focused on. The animeshes and sub-contro...
Read more

Welcome to the AI Animesh Sexbot Party @ Sunset Forest!

Image
Thanks to the fabulous Christmas Incognito we have a new location in Sunset Forest - for a recreation of the hugely popular SL21B Animesh Sexbot Party! Have a great time - touch the cake and bar if you want food and drink - and grab a Guide notecard from the prim marked "Touch to Join The Party"! The Party is Adult and has lots of sexually explicit content!  So 18+ only - thanks! You may want to start media (upper right corner on Firestorm) if you want the maximal experience.  The tech is at the edge of what is possible in 2025 - and we hope you are transported by it! UMA-Y and UMA-E - talk to your hostesses - or more - they are sex furniture!  UMA-Y is running a well-known generative AI and UMA-E is running a LLaMA2 LLM - they're smart! Plus they have a novel text-to-speech system running - so you can hear them chatting!  There are quite elaborate instructions for interacting with them on the Guide notecard! CAL-R and UMA-D - Dominant sexbots - grab an RLV relay and...
Read more

TTS2 - New Text to Audio Speech System! Hear What You Type In Media Audio!

Image
Type something into SL - and hear it in audio in a customized synthesized voice! Or give your bot an audio voice! It's released - in beta form, limited quantities while we check that everything is working!   The new media-based Text To Speech system (TTS2)!  Supports 124 voices plus a vast array of effects using linux sox!  Get it now on Marketplace for L$2 - there is a charge of L$1 per message. Check it out at  Second Life Marketplace - TTS2 - Text To Audio Speech System   Works as an avatar attachment, or pull the script+data notecard out and drop into any of our AI systems to give them audio voices! Uma-Y and Uma-E were using the new system at my SL21B exhibit  (now closed). Uma-E at my SL21B store was also using it (also now closed).  Now that SL21B is over you can hear Uma-E using the system over at the  West Mill Mainstore . Remember to set media to auto-play!
Read more