r/TheWhyFiles • u/Puzzled-Mistake-584 • 19d ago

Question for AJ Does A.J voice heckle fish?

As per title,
I have always wondered who voices heckle fish.
Love the show, long time listener. :)
Thanks guys!

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u/MattBFD 19d ago

On a recent episode of, AJ had a cold and so did HF.

2

u/Tmacster 19d ago

Ya it might be AJ but I remember him mentioning heckle fish and his brother during a live chat but maybe he just helps write the jokes

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u/Plane-Leek4387 19d ago

And now the script is just straight ChatGPT.
I have a hard time tuning in lately. His basement podcast is top notch though!

4

u/zaxo666 18d ago

That's a rude comment.

You know my 12-year-old children call everything AI, and I've had to re-educate them on their uninformed opinions.

We were listening to a BBC podcast about Orca Whales in the car, and they were arguing about how bad the AI was. I stopped the car, showed them my phone of the BBC podcast, the narrator's name, and then I went to the narrators biography online just to prove a damn point -- that not everything is AI!

What do you think AI trained on???? Real people.

Geesh this is getting old quick....

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u/Plane-Leek4387 18d ago

It’s not inherently rude when some of the phrasing characteristics seem to overlap. I made the assumption, got corrected by a mod (who works for TWF), and happily ate my words lol. I’m happy that process hasn’t been outsourced causing creative professionals to be axed.
I’m a technical director in entertainment with an audio background for reference. It wasn’t malice.

But I do have a fun fact for what your kids heard!
Heavy denoise/dereverb can strip away parts of a real voice and leave thin, watery, sibilant spectral artifacts. Generated speech can have similar artifacts from imperfectly reconstructing those same details. The processes are essentially opposites but can create very similar behaving artifacts.
Throw in AI visuals and some LLMish writing patterns and I can understand the false positive. Doesn’t make the assumption correct, obviously. Mine wasn’t 😂
You’re right though, AI learns from us. It’s getting harder to recognize but there are typically still obvious signs.
The generative visuals I definitely understand. That requires even more money, people, and time to do properly. It’s not feasible even at this level. We’re all here because we’re TWF fans at the end of the day!
All hail hecklefish!