Seinfeld attempts to register at MGM Grand Las Vegas for $20k guaranteed poker tournament

[Dan Druff]

If you haven't heard, MGM Las Vegas poker room has had some controversy lately, when an employee quit in protest of the room modifying tournament guarantees mid-series.

I just got word that Jerry Seinfeld got caught up in the whole thing when he tried to register, but fortunately a PFA Radio listener was there to record the whole thing, and he provided it to me:

[Dan Druff]

Deleted a lot of pointless stuff in this thread.

I only posted the above because this was one of my more difficult voice AI ventures, and I felt it came out pretty well (especially if you're familiar with the source material -- the Seinfeld "rental car reservations" bit). Here's the original:





My version got a very positive response on Twitter, so I thought I'd post it here. There were various difficult elements in producing my MGM version of the bit:

- Writing -- I basically had to be a one-man Seinfeld writing team, and do it in the style of the actual show

- Inflection -- AI is not good at the proper inflections, and there's no way with the tool I use to force a particular inflection. This is especially difficult when imitating a guy like Jerry Seinfeld, whose inflection is a big part of his comedy.

- Timing -- I basically had to be the equivalent of a director of a (very brief) Seinfeld episode, setting the pacing and timing of the lines, the pauses, and the interactions between characters. Obviously AI can't do this, so I had to do all of this manually with a sound editor

- General AI idiosyncracies -- Sometimes things on AI just don't come out right, whether it's pronunciation, weird vocal issues, and other shit. So I had to work around that too, or use an editor to fix things.



Anyway I thought it came out pretty well, and resembled an actual Seinfeld bit you'd see on the real show.

[Dan Druff]

By the way, I'm hearing from people connected to MGM that my little Seinfeld AI skit made a difference. They were already reeling because of the employee who publicly quit over the lowered guarantee amounts, but when this Seinfeld thing went semi-viral on poker Twitter, they decided enough was enough, and reversed the decision.

I don't have that 100% confirmed, but people in Vegas have told me that the Seinfeld thing was kind of the final straw to the decision.

[GrenadaRoger]

Deleted a lot of pointless stuff in this thread.

I only posted the above because this was one of my more difficult voice AI ventures, and I felt it came out pretty well (especially if you're familiar with the source material -- the Seinfeld "rental car reservations" bit). Here's the original:





My version got a very positive response on Twitter, so I thought I'd post it here. There were various difficult elements in producing my MGM version of the bit:

- Writing -- I basically had to be a one-man Seinfeld writing team, and do it in the style of the actual show

- Inflection -- AI is not good at the proper inflections, and there's no way with the tool I use to force a particular inflection. This is especially difficult when imitating a guy like Jerry Seinfeld, whose inflection is a big part of his comedy.

- Timing -- I basically had to be the equivalent of a director of a (very brief) Seinfeld episode, setting the pacing and timing of the lines, the pauses, and the interactions between characters. Obviously AI can't do this, so I had to do all of this manually with a sound editor

- General AI idiosyncracies -- Sometimes things on AI just don't come out right, whether it's pronunciation, weird vocal issues, and other shit. So I had to work around that too, or use an editor to fix things.



Anyway I thought it came out pretty well, and resembled an actual Seinfeld bit you'd see on the real show.

so did Ben submit it as a project for his school video editing class?

[desertrunner]

One thing that always annoyed me about Seinfeld- On his show, he always gave himself the 8-10 scaled girlfriends. But in real life, she had to accept a lower range of 6+ at best. Funny at the real life and show scale in girlfriends.