Court agrees to block collection of Trump’s civil fraud judgment if he puts up $175M

• March 25, 2024

By JENNIFER PELTZ and MICHAEL R. SISAK (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York appeals court on Monday agreed to hold off collection of former President Donald Trump’s more than $454 million civil fraud judgment — if he puts up $175 million within 10 days.

If he does, it will stop the clock on collection and prevent the state from seizing the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s assets while he appeals. The appeals court also reversed other aspects of a trial judge’s ruling that had barred Trump and sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. from serving in corporate leadership for several years.

In all, the order was a significant victory for the ex-president as he defends the real estate empire that vaulted him into public life.

The development came just before New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, was expected to initiate efforts to collect the judgment.

Trump, who was attending a separate hearing in his criminal hush money case in New York, posted on his Truth Social platform that he would post a bond, securities or cash to cover the $175 million sum.

“This also shows how ridiculous and outrageous” trial Judge Arthur Engoron’s judgment was, Trump wrote.

James’ office, meanwhile, noted that the judgment still stands, while collection is paused.

“Donald Trump is still facing accountability for his staggering fraud. The court has already found that he engaged in years of fraud to falsely inflate his net worth and unjustly enrich himself, his family, and his organization,” the office said in a statement.

Trump’s lawyers had pleaded for a state appeals court to halt collection, claiming it was “a practical impossibility” to get an underwriter to sign off on a bond for such a large sum, which grows by the day because of interest. The Trump attorneys had earlier proposed a $100 million bond, but an appellate judge had said no late last month.

The ruling was issued by the state’s intermediate appeals court, the Appellate Division of the state’s trial court, where Trump is fighting to overturn a judge’s Feb. 16 finding that he lied about his wealth as he built the real estate empire that launched him to stardom and the presidency.

After James won the judgment, she didn’t seek to enforce it during a legal time-out for Trump to ask the appeals court for a reprieve from paying up.

That period ended Monday, though James could have decided to allow Trump more time.

James told ABC News last month that if Trump doesn’t have the money to pay, she would seek to seize his assets and was “prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid.”

She didn’t detail the process or specify what holdings she meant, and her office has declined more recently to discuss its plans. Meanwhile, it has filed notice of the judgment, a technical step toward potentially moving to collect.

Seizing assets is a common legal option when someone doesn’t have the cash to pay a civil court penalty. In Trump’s case, potential targets could include properties such as his Trump Tower penthouse, aircraft, Wall Street office building or golf courses.

The attorney general also could go after his bank and investment accounts. Trump maintained on social media on Friday that he has almost $500 million in cash but intends to use much of it on his presidential run. He has accused James and New York state Judge Arthur Engoron, who’s also a Democrat, of seeking “to take the cash away so I can’t use it on the campaign.”

One possibility would be for James’ office to go through a legal process to have local law enforcement seize properties, then seek to sell them off. But that’s a complicated prospect in Trump’s case, noted Stewart Sterk, a real estate law professor at Cardozo School of Law.

“Finding buyers for assets of this magnitude is something that doesn’t happen overnight,” he said, noting that at any ordinary auction, “the chances that people are going to be able to bid up to the true value of the property is pretty slim.”

Trump’s debt stems from a monthslong civil trial last fall over the state’s allegations that he, his company and top executives vastly puffed up his wealth on financial statements, conning bankers and insurers who did business with him. The statements valued his penthouse for years as though it were nearly three times its actual size, for example.

Trump and his co-defendants denied any wrongdoing, saying the statements actually lowballed his fortune, came with disclaimers and weren’t taken at face value by the institutions that lent to or insured him. The penthouse discrepancy, he said, was simply a mistake made by subordinates.

Engoron sided with the attorney general and ordered Trump to pay $355 million, plus interest that grows daily. Some co-defendants, including his sons and company executive vice presidents, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, were ordered to pay far smaller amounts. Monday’s ruling also puts those on hold if the $175 million bond is posted.

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Under New York law, filing an appeal generally doesn’t hold off enforcement of a judgment. But there’s an automatic pause if the person or entity posts a bond that covers what’s owed.

The ex-president’s lawyers have said it’s impossible for him to do that. They said underwriters wanted 120% of the judgment and wouldn’t accept real estate as collateral. That would mean tying up over $557 million in cash, stocks and other liquid assets, and Trump’s company needs some left over to run the business, his attorneys have said.

Trump’s attorneys asked an appeals court to freeze collection without his posting a bond. The attorney general’s office objected.

​ Orange County Register 

NCAA Tournament: Women’s basketball scores and updates Monday, March 25

• March 25, 2024

The NCAA Tournament’s second round continues Monday morning for women’s basketball teams. UCLA and USC represent the local area as they compete in the second round for an opportunity to advance to the Sweet 16.

Here’s the schedule (with TV channels) and we’ll update with final scores throughout the day:

(7) Mississippi vs. (2) Notre Dame, 11 a.m. (ESPN)

(3) NC State vs. (6) Tennessee, 1 p.m. (ESPN)

(3) UConn vs. (6) Syracuse, 3 p.m. (ESPN)

(4) Indiana vs. (5) Oklahoma, 3:30 p.m. (ESPN2)

(1) Iowa vs. (8) West Virginia, 5 p.m. (ESPN)

(2) UCLA vs. (7) Creighton, 5:30 p.m. (ESPN2)

(1) USC vs. (8) Kansas, 7 p.m. (ESPN)

(4) Gonzaga vs. (5) Utah, 7:30 p.m. (ESPN2)

Swanson: USC, UCLA enjoy first-round routs, but job’s far from finished

Beloved reserve India Otto seizes her moment to shine in USC’s first-round NCAA win

USC women open NCAA Tournament by routing Texas A&M-Corpus Christi

UCLA women’s basketball wants to punch first against Creighton in second round

UCLA women’s basketball earns win over CBU without star center Lauren Betts

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​ Orange County Register 

New museum exhibit ‘Duke’s Dream’ spotlights Hawaiian surfer’s Olympic vision

• March 25, 2024

Back when modern-day wave riding was still in its infancy, a young Hawaiian surfer had a dream that one day his beloved sport would be included as part of the Olympic Games.

Duke Kahanamoku had won an Olympic gold medal for swimming in the 1912 Stockholm games and his vision was for surfers standing on the winners podium as well. Unlikely at the time, considering only a handful of people knew how to surf.

But more than 100 years later, the International Huntington Beach Surfing Museum has unveiled a new exhibit, “Duke’s Dream Came True: Surfing’s Road to the Olympics,” that’s an ode to the man considered to be the father of modern-day surfing, who spread surfing and the aloha spirit around the world, and whose influence is still ever-present today.

The extensive exhibit features 18 renowned surf artists depicting the Hawaiian surfer and showcases 16 panels highlighting Kahanamoku’s various life chapters – from his younger years teaching tourists to surf in Waikiki, to his Olympic accolades, his stint as a Hollywood actor, countless surfing exhibitions around the world, appearances in Huntington Beach and a lifesaving boat rescue off Corona del Mar in 1925. 

Then, there were his older years, when he was top sheriff in Honolulu and an “Ambassador of Aloha” for his home in Hawaii. He was also master of ceremonies when Hawaii was declared a state.

The exhibit tells an important story in surf history and heritage, said surf artist Rick Blake, who helped curate the collection along with fellow artist Dave Reynolds and Peter “PT” Townend, the museum’s executive director.

“This is telling the story not just of surfing, but the Olympics, Duke’s life and all of the cultural things that go with it,” Blake said. “The kids will come in here and they will learn so much. There’s so much information in this one exhibit, it’s really incredible.”

Many younger generations don’t know Kahanamoku’s important story, how his life intertwined with the growing popularity of the sport and how he and others do surfing exhibitions in places like Huntington Beach, helped grow coastal towns as developers sought to sell plots of land.

Townend pointed out a few of his own memorabilia pieces that he brought in for the exhibit, including his “Duke” jacket and trophy from when he competed in the Duke Kahanamoku Invitational Surfing Championship, the premiere surfing contest in Hawaii in the ’60s.

A photo shows Kahanamoku with aviator Amelia Earhart, who he taught to surf before she went missing a year later.

The featured artists showcased in the exhibit were asked to capture different chapters of Kahanamoku’s life, some detailing his younger years, others showing the iconic surfer as his hair grayed and face aged. Among the artists are Sandow Birk, Robb Havassy, Colleen Gnos, Courtney Conlogue and Joshua Paskowitz, to name a few.

A portrait painted with deep blue acrylic on three surfboards by Victoria White has a price of $20,000, a piece she painted live at last year’s U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach.

Blake painted a tribute to the Duke Invitational surf contests, depicting some of the early winners with Sunset Beach, where the contest was held, in the backdrop.

Blake said he was honored to feature work alongside all of his idols.

The artwork by Birk depicts Kahanamoku doing a surfing exhibit from the Huntington Beach Pier, oil rigs and crowds watching from the sand in the backdrop.

Well-known surf artist Phil Roberts did several portrait pieces, including two side-by-side depictions of the Hawaiian surfer, one in his younger years and the other as he grew older, his salt-and-pepper hair framing his aging face, capturing both his strength and grace.

“The whole entire premise of the show is really a beautiful story,” said Roberts. “We all truly, greatly, deeply admire who Duke was and the tremendous leader he was – the philosophy, his spirit for life and aloha. He was a visionary.”

Roberts called Kahanamoku a “grandfather of us all in this great family of surfing, this tribe.”

“Anything any of us can do to portray and tell this man’s story, and what it means to us, is a gift,” Roberts said.

The exhibit focuses not just on Kahanamoku, but on his legacy that lived on with the 2020 Olympics, where the first-ever crop of surfers joined the games in Tokyo.

A segment is dedicated to the gold medal winners, Hawaii’s Carissa Moore and Brazil’s Italo Ferreira, as well as showcasing surfboards ridden by USA Surfing team members Kolohe Andino, of San Clemente, two-time world champion John John Florence and Caroline Marks, a Florida surfer who now calls San Clemente home.

There’s also a spot for two-time U.S. Open of Surfing winner Kanoa Igarashi, who earned the silver medal for Japan, but was raised surfing the Huntington Beach pier.

There’s also a place honoring Fernando Aguerre, president of the International Surfing Association, who tirelessly fought for decades for the sport to be included in the Olympics.

Townend talked about how much has changed since he was crowned the first pro surfing champ in 1976, back when competitive surfers would only dream of making a million dollars.

“You barely made enough money to scrape by,” he said with a chuckle.

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Now, while still not as lucrative as other professional sports, surfing is a career path that people can strive toward rather than just a lifestyle pastime – and since 2020, a sport they can aspire for an Olympic medal.

The timing isn’t coincidental, Townend noted, with surfing in the Olympics this July, and Huntington Beach making a bid to host the surfing competition when the games come to Los Angeles in 2028.

“We’re in the Olympics year and we’re going to have two new champions,” he said. “For that reason, we’re going to keep this up all year.”

For more information on the exhibit and the museum, visit huntingtonbeachsurfingmuseum.org

​ Orange County Register 

These 5 Colorado dude ranches are spectacular in winter 

• March 14, 2024

Dude ranches often are associated with summer vacations. We picture city slickers slipping away to enjoy the great outdoors and fresh mountain air, learning the rhythms of a horse’s gait and some new tunes around a campfire. But visiting a ranch in winter? Oh, what fun!

Come the colder months, Colorado’s dude ranches offer all kinds of activities, including gliding across the snow on cross-country skis and galloping through the powder on horseback. There’s also dog sledding, sleigh rides, tubing and more, says Courtney Frazier, executive director of the Colorado Dude & Guest Ranch Association.

“You’ll love the evening campfires and cozy cabins,” Frazier says. “Some of our ranches also have full spas to relax in after a busy day of exploring the Rocky Mountains.”

Saddle up: Here are five dude ranches that are perfect for winter escapes with amenities that include a private ski mountain, a top-notch culinary program and a murder mystery weekend.

The C Lazy U Ranch near Granby is an all-inclusive luxury guest ranch. (Provided by C Lazy U Ranch)

C Lazy U Ranch

The C Lazy U near Granby couldn’t have a more idyllic setting. Days on the 8,500-acre ranch start with “Cowboy Coffee” traditions around an outdoor firepit with the nip of the alpine air and end with toasting s’mores. In between, there are horse and sleigh rides through the winter wonderland. Plus, a Zamboni is used to groom a pond on the property so you can skate in the open air or join a pickup hockey game.

Guests can also go fly-fishing in Willow Creek, a tributary of the Colorado River. Some sections build up ice shelves, but the creek is still flowing and the fish are still biting.

Three daily gourmet meals are a part of the all-inclusive rate (expect to pay $587 per person/night or more) and the winter dining menu includes carmel apple venison, pheasant cordon bleu, duck confit perogies and rose glazed pink prawns.

Devil’s Thumb Ranch offers lodging for families and friends groups and winter fun including cross-country skiing and horse-drawn sleigh rides. (Provided by Devil’s Thumb Ranch)

Devil’s Thumb Ranch Resort & Spa

Go dashing through the snow — on a sleigh, cross-country skis, or with a pair of snowshoes strapped to your feet. Devil’s Thumb Ranch near Granby is a rustic-luxe winter playground with some unique offerings, including cozy rides in a heated snow cat that traverses the snow-covered Ranch Creek Valley.

The resort also has fat tire bikes that can plow through powder, and Winter Park Ski Resort is just 10 miles from the ranch if doing laps on the slopes is on your mind. After playing in the snow, book a spa treatment and slink into a copper soaking tub or enjoy a heated river stone massage. Rates vary widely, depending on lodging, meal and activities booked. Expect to pay at least $460 a night for lodging for two people.

Vista Verde Ranch offers an array of activities throughout winter, including the occasional live-music performance in the lodge. (Jad Davenport, Provided by Vista Verde Ranch)

Vista Verde Guest Ranch

Old West meets luxury at Vista Verde, an all-inclusive dude ranch near Steamboat Springs. The culinary program is worth writing home about, with winter dishes that include carrot cake waffles with walnut syrup, Cuban sandwiches and gnocchi with short rib ragu.

At dinner, add a wine pairing. The guest ranch’s cellar, with more than 90 selections, has received accolades from Wine Spectator.

There are plenty of ways to work up an appetite. The ranch has a fleet of fat tire bikes, plus snowmobiling excursions, tubing, and backcountry ski touring. There also are plenty of groomed trails for beginners. Three-night stays in late winter start at $2,295 per person.

Three Forks Ranch

Near the Colorado-Wyoming border, Three Forks Ranch bills itself as being the “West Kept Secret.” The 200,000-acre ranch has an exclusive partnership with the Mayo Clinic, a healthcare nonprofit that staffs the wellness facility with certified coaches who can provide nutrition advice and personal training.

A stay at the all-inclusive resort includes spa treatments (guests staying three nights can pre-book two services). The ranch also offers private skiing on a mountain that gets blanketed in snow and has 20 runs. Heated snowcats deliver guests to the summit. Nightly rates start at $1,995 per person.

Guests’ boots are lined up and ready for the next ride at Sundance Trail Guest Ranch on Dec. 20 2013. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

Sundance Trail Guest Ranch

Sundance Trail’s guests have a few options for winter visits at the ranch near Red Feather Lakes. The Country Inn stay includes lodging, meals and morning horseback rides. Or, select the bed-and-breakfast route.

Guests enjoy horseback rides through the Roosevelt National Forest, cozying up by the fireplace and stargazing in the jacuzzi. Gather a group of 8-12 people and the ranch will provide a Murder Mystery getaway. Between meals and horseback rides your group can try to figure out “whodunnit.”

Bed and breakfast nightly rates start at $230 per two-person suite or $170 for single occupancy.

​ Orange County Register 

Horse racing notes: Cal-bred champ faces challenge

• March 14, 2024

SANTA ANITA LEADERS

(Through Thursday)

Jockeys / Wins

Juan Hernandez / 45

Flavien Prat / 38

Antonio Fresu / 35

Frankie Dettori / 26

Umberto Rispoli / 19

Trainers / Wins

Doug O’Neill / 25

Mark Glatt / 21

Bob Baffert / 20

Phil D’Amato / 19

Steve Knapp / 16

WEEKEND STAKES AT SANTA ANITA

Saturday

• $100,000 Grade III San Carlos Stakes, 4-year-olds and up, 7 furlongs

• $100,000 The Pasadena, 3-year-olds, 1 mile on turf

Sunday

• $100,000 Irish O’Brien Stakes, Cal-bred fillies and mares, 4 and up, about 6 1/2 furlongs on turf

DOWN THE STRETCH

• The Chosen Vron, just named 2023 California-bred Horse of the Year, starts from the sometimes tricky No. 1 post and faces streaking Elwood Blues and Ghost of Midnight in Saturday’s San Carlos Stakes. The 6-year-old gelding, winner of 13 of 17 races, started from the the rail in sprints twice previously, producing a minor stakes win and a defeat at odds-on.

• Nysos, the top-ranked North American 3-year-old, is out of training for a month, the Thoroughbred Daily News was first to report. Trainer Bob Baffert told TDN the colt had a minor setback. He was scratched from the March 3 San Felipe Stakes after running his record to 3 for 3 by winning the Feb. 3 Robert B. Lewis.

• Official future betting on the May 4 Kentucky Derby is open Friday through 3 p.m. Sunday. Sierra Leone (5-1), Timberlake (8-1), Dornoch (12-1) and Fierceness (12-1) top the morning line among 39 individual horses listed, and there’s an “all other 3-year-olds” option (15-1). California-based horses are longshots: Michael McCarthy-trained Endlessly (50-1), winner of the El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields, and Phil D’Amato’s Stronghold (80-1), first in the Sunland Derby in New Mexico.

• Fans at Santa Anita can cheer the memory of Jerry Antonucci on Sunday. The sixth will be named in honor of the popular Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Orange County Register handicapper who died Feb. 6 at age 77.

• Los Alamitos management opted to cancel its sixth race last Sunday – and connected multi-race bets – after five of the six entrants were scratched. It was a 1,000-yard race, with a $15,000 purse, open to thoroughbreds and quarter horses. Steward Tom Ward said he’d never seen a race scratch down to one horse in his 54 years on the job.

• Purse increases of $1 million were announced for the Breeders’ Cup Classic (to $7 million) and Turf (to $5 million) to be run at Del Mar on Nov. 1-2. Those races already were the two richest in America.

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• Failure of primary and backup broadband links were blamed for the AmTote totalizator system outage across the nation Saturday that forced the Tampa Bay Derby to be run without betting and caused delays in payouts at Santa Anita. Tampa Bay Downs’ biggest race handled more than $2.6 million in single-race bets in 2023.

• In England, Galopin Des Champs and jockey Paul Townend are favored to win Friday’s Cheltenham Gold Cup. They’re trying to repeat their 2023 win for trainer Willie Mullins and cap a week of Irish domination at Cheltenham’s famous jump-racing festival.

— Kevin Modesti

​ Orange County Register 

AI-narrated books are here. Are humans out of a job? This startup has a solution

• March 14, 2024

Roxana Popescu | The San Diego Union-Tribune

If you’ve listened to an audiobook or a narrated news article in the past year or so, there’s a chance it was created not by a human, but by AI software that mimics the sound of a human voice.

Some day soon or further off, synthetic narrators and actors might be commonplace and accepted without so much as a blink, but for now there is room for debate: What is lost and what is gained when a machine does the work of a human performer? Who should earn revenue when jobs like audiobook narration are outsourced to AI?

The co-founder of a San Diego software company called Yembo is wading into this quagmire with an unprecedented answer to an unprecedented scenario. Voice actors in San Diego and beyond are watching this approach to paying a human for AI-enhanced labor with interest and apprehension.

The scenario: Yembo’s co-founder wrote and self-published a book about AI, and an actor recorded the English audiobook last year and got paid for that recording time. Now her AI-cloned voice is being used to narrate 15 translations of that audiobook.

The narrator does not speak Swedish, Ukrainian and Turkish, but her voice does.

“US English is narrated by the flesh-and-blood Hailey, (the) rest is AI in her likeness,” Zach Rattner, the book’s author and publisher, and Yembo’s co-founder, wrote in an email.

Hailey refers to Hailey Hansard, the actor whose voice is being cloned. Through her contract, Hansard will be paid royalties for audiobooks in her voice, even though she did not narrate the book in any of those languages.

While AI narration of audiobooks and articles is increasingly prevalent, this may be the first instance of royalty payment for AI-cloned translations in the audiobook realm — a booming industry that is expected to reach $39 billion globally by 2033, according to market research company market.us.

“As far as I know, this audiobook project is the first one where the narrator gains royalties on a product that uses their AI likeness, but they didn’t create,” Rattner said. “It’s the first that I know of, and it was enough that when I tried to figure it out, I couldn’t find anything. We had to figure it out from scratch. There weren’t templates we could find.”

Sandra Conde, a San Diego actor whose likeness has been scanned into a generative AI gaming project, reviewed details from the contract and said it addresses the interests of publisher and voice actor in an uncharted, fast-shifting territory.

“It’s a new frontier kind of thing, where we don’t know what it’s going look like, even like two years from now, or a year from now,” Conde said.

Robert Sciglimpaglia, a Connecticut-based voice actor and entertainment attorney, said the contract is noteworthy because it is groundbreaking — touching upon audiobook narration, translation and AI.

“This is the wild, wild west,” he said. “The (actors’) union doesn’t have anything for (AI) translation that I know about.”

The contract matters because of what’s at stake: “This is a big issue in the audiobook world right now: whether you use human voices or use cloned voices. Because there are some audiobooks being done with AI, and narrators are trying to protect live narration — trying to protect their livelihood,” he said.

AI will without a doubt replace human narrators, he added.

“The question in my mind is how far is it going to go? Is it gonna take 50 percent of the business? 25 percent? 75 percent? 100 percent? That’s the question we should be asking,” Sciglimpaglia said.

Tim Friedlander, the president and co-founder of the National Association of Voice Actors, said this contract is significant, even if it’s just one example, because it allows for human narration to be replaced or supplemented by AI generated material.

“Any kind of instance where you have normalization of synthetic content, (the contract terms are) going to matter,” Friedlander said from Los Angeles.

Human actors, he added, have something over AI tools: their humanity — which lets them give nuanced readings based on lived experience, culture and context. Machines might try to mimic that, but they can’t interpret the words in a story or an essay in an authentic way, he said.

Kind of like the Robert Frost saying about poetry being lost in translation.

Rattner agrees. He did, after all, hire a human to record the English audiobook instead of using a cloned voice from the start. Just the translations are cloned.

“I mean, there are inflections. In the audiobook, she snickers and chuckles a couple of times. Like, you do lose something by being AI,” he said. But there are scenarios when AI makes sense, he said.

Will listeners care if a voice is human or synthetic?

That might depend on the book. Or the voice.

Help wanted: chromosomes optional

While actors have been paid for projects that record and recombine their voices for decades — Siri debuted in 2011, with a foreboding backstory around consent and compensation — the use of generative AI to clone voices is new and far more efficient, requiring just a small sample to create new material.

Ten years ago “you couldn’t do this — you would have had to have a voice actor and pay him for a month” to record a deep bank of sounds and words, said Sciglimpaglia, a member of SAG-AFTRA. “Now you can take a three minute sample and you can do anything you want with it. You can do an audiobook, a film, a TV show, you can put it in three different languages. It only takes a very small amount of data.”

The Atlantic magazine uses an AI narration plug-in, as does inewsource, a San Diego investigative news outlet. A cottage industry of AI text-to-speech narration services have proliferated: ElevenLabs, Podcastle, Speechify, Murf AI, Revoicer, Audiobook.ai and others.

Before this leap, acting and audiobook narration were harder to outsource. The price of labor may be cheap in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, but a California cadence is one thing they can’t manufacture. AI is a workaround: instead of farming out to people, use machines.

That’s why actors and other creative professionals see generative AI as an existential threat.

And that was why actors and writers clashed with studios in strikes last year, Sciglimpaglia said.

Should studios be allowed to scan actors’ faces and generate new material using those scans, or should they keep hiring humans even if synthetic actors — which don’t need bathroom breaks or paychecks — could replace them? And if studios do scan an actor’s features, can they pay just for that scan, or should they pay for the future or potential uses — uses that would have been fulfilled by the human actor?

The actors’ strike settlement allows for AI cloning, but set limits around future uses and added rules around compensation that better protect actors, Sciglimpaglia said.

There are about 100,000 working voice actors in the U.S., a conservative estimate, and around 80 percent of voiceover work is nonunion, Friedlander said.

Human and machine

Last summer, Rattner — who worked in software innovation at Qualcomm before co-founding Yembo — self-published a book called “Grow Up Fast: Lessons from an AI Startup.” It’s an entrepreneurship memoir about how he helped build Yembo, a company that uses a subset of AI called computer vision to make tools for the moving and insurance industries.

The book’s Spanish translation will be released this month, followed by Ukrainian and more than 10 other languages. All could come out within months — with time built in for tweaking and revising, Rattner said.

AI narration “definitely brings the barrier of entry down for people who wouldn’t have been able to get their message out,” he said.

He broke down the time and money costs of human and machine. The English audiobook took about four weeks to record. (Hansard could only record on weekends and her vocal cords needed breaks.) “Factoring in mastering, editing, QA listening, and retakes, I’d estimate the US English audiobook took about 65 man-hours of work across all parties to create,” he wrote.

Next, they used three hours of her book recording to train an AI tool called a speech synthesis model and used that model to create the other books in translation.

Not counting translation by humans (Rattner hired people to write translations, because “AI translation makes funky mistakes in unpredictable ways”), each AI audiobook narration takes five hours, with the bulk of that spent on quality assurance — weeding out mistakes like reading 2nd not as “second” but as “two-en-dee.”

The dollar difference is more staggering: A human narrator might charge a few hundred dollars per recording session or perhaps $2,500 for an audiobook, he estimated. The voice synthesis software costs $22 a month.

A fair contract

The narrator didn’t have to do extra work to create 15 translated books, but the publisher didn’t have to go out and hire 15 other narrators. When part of an audiobook’s production is outsourced to AI, what payment is fair to creator and publisher?

This contract, which Rattner shared with the Union-Tribune, attempts to minimize losses to one human worker while maximizing the benefits of AI, which for audiobook translations include expanded access to information. Every time a translation of “Grow Up Fast” sells, the narrator will earn money — even though she never recorded in those other languages. So will the publisher, who used AI to narrate translations at a fraction of the cost of using a human actor.

—Hansard was paid $500 per four-hour day of studio recording and gets 10 percent royalties on translated works that use her cloned voice. Payments are quarterly over a 10-year term.

—Her cloned voice can only be used for this book’s translations. Other uses require a new license.

—The narrator gets 30 days to review the product, including translations, and ask for edits before it goes live.

—The publisher can sell the book at any price and do giveaways.

One section covers labeling. “The use of AI must be disclosed in product markings,” Rattner said. This way, readers or listeners will know if the audiobook was “Narrated by Hailey Hansard” or “In the voice of Hailey Hansard.”

Other actors who reviewed the contract’s key points called it “encouraging” and said it appears generally fair to both parties, though some shared reservations.

All agreed the narrator should get royalties. The publisher is making a greater profit by using AI instead of human actors, and future narrators are losing out on potential income because of AI, Sciglimpaglia said.

“They just have one person to read in one language and they can use a machine to convert it for nothing,” he said.

Friedlander likes that the contract addresses consent, control, compensation and transparency. But he said even an equitable contract raises questions about precedent being set.

“This one voice actor gets to do all of these different languages,” he said. He mentioned the “damage it’s done to all of the other narrators who would have done this, in those different languages.”

Some day there might be “a handful of four or five narrators who become the voice of everything,” he said. Audiobooks in particular are “one of the places that a lot of people get their start” in voice acting. If the norm becomes synthetic voices, how will those new people get started, he asked.

Conde wondered why royalties stop after 10 years. “Does the contract drop off and her voice can be used anywhere?” she asked. “I would be worried about what happens after the 10-year clause.”

Wendy Hovland, a San Diego voice and on-camera actor, said the time limit can help the narrator renegotiate. She also said the publisher “appears to be working openly with her, to tell her how it’s going to be used and come up with a way to compensate that works for both parties.” Voice actors don’t always get that, she said.

“That is a big issue: voices being — I don’t know if ‘stolen’ is the right word, but used in a way that was not originally intended. Voice actors thought they were voicing one thing and found out that their voices are used for something else,” she said.

Hansard feels “very protected” by the contract because it forbids other uses for her cloned voice without her OK.

“Like other actors and creators, I do worry about being exploited by AI. But this particular agreement was win-win. Zach was very receptive to taking care of all of the concerns I had,” Hansard said.

AI audiobook as proof of concept

To understand why Rattner prioritized creating a fair contract with the narrator — what’s it in for Yembo — it helps to understand what Yembo sells. Yembo’s software scans the insides of homes and creates inventories and 3D models for moving, storage and insurance reconstruction estimates.

The biggest challenge to signing new customers has not been competitors but resistance to change, Rattner said. In an industry where using a typewriter is still feasible — as one moving company he encountered does — how will they trust new technology, whether or not it’s AI? If things have worked fine for decades, why risk it?

His solution: prove that AI can be used for more than profit.

“I find the business arrangement just as interesting as the book itself. I … think it’s an interesting story about how AI can be used for good, especially with all the anxiety around AI actors,” Rattner wrote .

“AI allows for economic value to be tied to the output created, not the effort exerted (e.g., time for dollars),” he added.

Rattner said he wouldn’t have pursued the foreign language narrations without AI, given that his job is running a tech startup and not a publishing house. He found the narrator from within Yembo’s ranks: Hansard is a product manager employed by Yembo and a former professional actor. She is SAG-eligible, but not a union member.

“The alternative (to AI) was nothing,” he said. By nothing, he explained, he meant no translations and no hiring narrators in various languages.

In an interview from Los Angeles, Hansard talked about the uncanniness of hearing her vocal clone. This is her first audiobook, both in English and in translation.

“It’s almost jarring to hear my voice speaking languages that I’ve never spoken before, but also amazing that this possibility exists,” she said.

She was comfortable with the project because she was assured it was not taking work from others.

“I think the best outcome would be that AI doesn’t replace human actors or human voices,” Hansard said. “It only supplements if it wouldn’t have been possible without it.”

She continued, “I think that’s where everyone is going to have to reach into their humanity to make sure that AI doesn’t replace humanity. That it only enhances — if something wasn’t going to be possible, then it fills the gap.”

©2024 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

The Audible: Lakers hexed, Clippers called out, and are people overreacting to Caleb?

• March 14, 2024

Jim Alexander: Do you get the sense that the good fans of Sacramento are having more fun than they should watching their Kings toy with the Lakers for … how long is their winning streak now? Seems like forever.

And I’m sure that among those fans are lots of those who were around for, and vividly remember, how the Shaq and Kobe Lakers – and, um, Robert Horry – broke their hearts in the playoffs in 2001 and 2002. (Come to think of it, Doug Christie – one of the mainstays of those Kings teams that came close but not close enough – is on Mike Brown’s current Sacramento coaching staff. Wonder how much he’s enjoying this.

Sacramento’s victory at home Wednesday night – the Kings coming from behind with a rush for their fifth straight win and eighth of nine over the Lakers, with a sweep of this year’s season series – only emphasized that (a) the NBA is a game of matchups, and (b) this one, and the one against Denver, are horrendous matchups for the Lakers. Domantas Sabonis is a poor man’s Nikola Jokic and is just as difficult to solve, and De’Aaron Fox and Harrison Barnes shredded the Lakers’ defense last night. With Fox, in particular, it feels like he can just go wherever he wants on the floor and the Lakers can’t keep up with him.

You think the folks in the state capital aren’t lusting after a playoff matchup with these guys? It could put a lot of old ghosts to bed (and I know that’s a mixed metaphor, but bear with me).

Mirjam Swanson: Sacramento will be a tough out for many teams, I think. I figured the Kings would be better for having gone through that seven-game thriller against Golden State last season, and they are and they will be.

And Denver? The defending NBA champs? Scariest matchup for everyone – Lakers included.

As talented a defender as he is, Anthony Davis’ krypto— wait, kryptonite is big strong centers who can power THROUGH him. But AD’s been telling us forever – he’s not really a center. The Lakers’ center is … well, no one that can alleviate such matchup nightmares. Which, no, doesn’t inspire a ton of confidence the rest of this season.

And, of course, because it’s the Lakers, there’s always the additional layer of intrigue. It depends who you see in this week’s Lakers’ Rorschach test: Were D’Angelo Russell’s comments in Wednesday’s ESPN profile – Darvin Ham: “There’s times we agree to agree, agree to disagree or come to an understanding”; Russell: “We played tennis with that. I hit the ball back, he hit it to me. … That’s the season” – critical of Ham or were they positive, as in, ‘we’ve put in the time to work through our differences?’ Probably depends on how you feel about both of those guys.

But two games after his fire-breathing 44-point performance to beat the Milwaukee Bucks, Russell had six points against Sac, whose guards, as you mentioned, torched the Lakers. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, either.

The Lakers, though, theoretically can beat anyone at any point. Or at least that’s what they’ve had us believing. But you’re right, maybe they can beat some teams at any point. And those teams might not be who they see when it’s a matter of advancing into and through the postseason.

Jim: What I got out of that ESPN piece was an evolution in this particular coach/player relationship: DLo coming into a new situation last year, maybe feeling like he couldn’t speak up the way he’d like because of existing relationships, and having to build a bond with Ham where they could speak openly and freely.

That said, DLo is certainly capable of a huge role down the stretch — I’d hesitate before I say “carrying” the team, because this is still Bron’s and AD’s team, and their voices register the loudest in the locker room. But then, as you noted, there’s always the potential for a six-point night like Wednesday’s. Maybe the player option in DLo’s contract this summer will be motivation enough over his next couple of months.

As for the other team in town … Ty Lue called out his Clippers for a lack of mental toughness the other night, after the Kawhi Leonard-less Clips essentially folded against Minnesota. Kawhi will make the road trip, so there’s optimism that his back issues won’t be ongoing. But if this is the way they respond when a key player isn’t available … well, if it continues it’ll be a short spring. But I don’t think it will.

After all, Minnesota is capable of making a lot of teams look bad.

Mirjam: That’s for sure, though they’ve especially been good at making the Clippers look bad this season. Matchups, ’n all. Anthony Edwards’ eyes light up every time someone even mentions the Clippers to him, seems like.

Don’t know what to make of the Clips at the moment; Kawhi’s health is paramount, of course. Like, that’s Nos. 1-10 of importance, A, B, C, first and foremost. But also of concern: Paul George’s regularly scheduled latter-season fade.

Pre-All-Star PG: 22.5 points per game. Post-All-Star PG: 19.9 points per game. Which hints at what feels like a less aggressive approach – when the Clippers need him to be trending the other way going into the playoffs. Especially if Leonard isn’t fully healthy.

And what could be just a lull – a regular, expected bit of midseason slog for most championship contenders – doesn’t feel like it, necessarily, if you’re a Clippers fan.

But the Clippers haven’t ever won that championship, they’ve never come through as championship contenders, so their poor fan base isn’t able to ascribe a slump and a mental lapse to the natural course of a long season … because it feels to those folks like the sky falling instead. Because that’s what’s happened before.

One of these days, though, they’ll break through. Whether that’s this year? Depends on Kawhi’s health … and his co-star’s performance.

Jim: Overreaction is standard fare in our industry. Which brings us to the run-up to the NFL draft – one of multiple storylines in North America’s first (but not only) 24/7/366 sports league, where any day they’re not talking about you on ESPN is a failure.

The issue is whether Caleb Williams – who should be the No. 1 pick in next month’s draft, and (poor soul) thus likely will be headed to the Chicago Bears – should have sat for a physical exam at the combine. He didn’t, indicating he didn’t feel it necessary that teams without a ghost of a chance at picking him should have his medical information. To me, that makes sense. If you’re serious about him – i.e., if you’re either the Bears or a team willing to move heaven and earth to trade up for him – you can see him at USC’s Pro Day (which is next Wednesday) and you can make arrangements with him for your own physical exam.

I’m of two minds about the combine and the whole run-up to the draft, anyway. On one hand the combine is a job interview of sorts – though I’m glad I never had to go through a job interview where I had to submit to a Wonderlic intelligence test (or, as the firm itself refers to it, “Cognitive Ability Test”). The gathering is an easy method for teams to acquire information, and for potential late round picks what happens in Indianapolis could be the difference between getting drafted and having to search for an opportunity as a free agent.

On the other hand, it’s one more dog-and-pony show meant to keep the NFL in the headlines, or else why would the NFL Network televise the thing? The Super Bowl leads into the combine, which leads into free agency – the expression “legal tampering period” is genius, and I wish the NBA would use it, too – and that leads into draft intrigue and the draft itself, OTAs, minicamps, etc. The goal is year-round domination of our attention, and any information about draftees that comes out of the combine is a side benefit.

Besides, shouldn’t the main evaluation point be what players have actually done in games, on film, against real live opponents bent on impeding them?

Mirjam: You’d think that – what players have done in actual games – would be the main evaluation point, yes.

Alas, there are more requirements for someone applying to be your NFL team’s quarterback … not that anyone should trust the Cognitive Ability Test you mentioned: Remember what happened last year with C.J. Stroud, who reportedly scored very low … but then played like the smartest guy out there every game – as a rookie QB!

Whether Williams’ utterly sensible (to me) stance is just plain sensible or whether you’re a team official who’s wary of someone who might want to test the status quo probably says more about that team and its officials than Williams. Because we know what Caleb can do on the field, and we know that he’s not afraid to push the envelope off of it – including by saying ‘nah’ to submitting to all the aspects of that traditional dog-and-pony show.

I think, though, when his pro career gets going, it’s going to go so well that all this hand wringing now is going to prove a minor footnote, a trivia question for only the hardest-core Caleb Williams fans, not some harbinger of things to come. This dude – as we in Southern California know – is a baller, and it’s going to be a blast watching him at the next level … even if it’s for the Bears.

​ Orange County Register 

Horse racing: The price isn’t right for Santa Anita bettors

• March 14, 2024

Horseplayers at Santa Anita have a problem this season that non-gamblers might find puzzling.

It’s too easy to pick winners.

Betting favorites are winning 46% of the races since the meet opened Dec. 26. That’s much higher than normal in thoroughbred racing (about 33%), than the highest for any of Santa Anita’s 85 previous winter-spring seasons (38.9% in 2016-17), than at this stage of last season at Santa Anita (34%), than at Del Mar last summer (37%), than at Golden Gate Fields in the San Francisco Bay Area (37%), and than the next-highest such figure at a major North American track now in season (39% at Gulfstream Park near Miami).

“It’s incredibly high,” said Jon Lindo, the veteran public handicapper, radio broadcaster and racehorse owner.

An outsider might think this sounds good. Lots of winning favorites mean more predictable racing. More predictable racing means fans can pick more winners and cash more tickets. Cashing tickets is what it’s all about, no?

Not exactly. Many racing fans choose this form of gambling for the potential to bet a little and win a lot by backing horses to win at tantalizing high odds and multiplying would-be payoffs with multi-horse and multi-race wagers.

That potential shrinks when too many short-priced favorites come in. The average odds for a winner at Santa Anita (4.06-1) are nearly a dollar lower than is typical at other major tracks, and average payoffs here for pick-threes, fours, fives and sixes are lower too, based on statistics from Bloodstock Research Information Services.

Why is this happening? What does it mean for racing fans? How can bettors make the best of the situation?

I threw those questions out to people with various racetrack perspectives, and their answers are clarifying if not reassuring.

Basically, favorites’ sky-high win percentage is an accurate reflection of the challenges Santa Anita faces in putting together competitive races.

That challenge begins with the general decline in thoroughbred breeding, the horse shortage compounded in California by the lack of other nearby major tracks to draw equine talent from and the lack of the on-site casinos that supplement race purses at many American tracks.

Race fields are smaller than they used to be, raising the win percentage for any single horse, not just favorites. A few “supertrainers” now manage many of the best runners at major tracks, and they can afford to wait for the softest spots and even dictate which races “fill” by entering more than one horse. Certain types of races are most popular at the entry box, leading them to be carded with the same contenders over and over, making them a little too easy to handicap.

One factor that’s different at Santa Anita in 2024 is the unusually rainy winter. Under current protocols, training is curtailed in inclement weather, which further reduces the number of horses ready to race.

Trainer Phil D’Amato noted that favorites’ win percentages are different from surface to surface and condition to condition. By my count, favorites are winning at 52% in dirt (main-track) races at Santa Anita, 41% in turf races. Claiming races are the only category of races in which favorites are winning at a significantly higher percentage on turf than on dirt.

“Everybody knows Bob Baffert(-trained) maidens on the dirt (are contenders to win),” D’Amato said.

By my count, though, Baffert-trained favorites in dirt maiden races are only 2 for 10 this season. Nothing is simple in this game.

Betting on all of the favorites actually would have been a marginally profitable strategy on some recent days. But favorites are by definition the horses that get the most public money, and making a go of betting on races in the long run requires finding winners the crowd isn’t. Fans should be more picky about which races to play, though that’s worthwhile advice at any track, anytime.

Santa Anita morning-line maker Jon White says the unusual reliability of favorites should make bettors more confident in “singling” short-priced horses in multi-race bets.

White also advises expecting the favorites’ win percentage to come back to normal as Santa Anita races through June 16.

“The law of averages suggests that’s a distinct possibility,” White said.

Lindo said he’s looking beyond Arcadia to bets like the Coast to Coast Pick 5, which combines races from Santa Anita and Gulfstream (with a relatively low 15% takeout).

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One bit of good news about a high favorites’ win percentage is that more fans get money back on their bets more often, allowing more cash to “churn” through the parimutuel economy.

But overall, less competitive racing is a problem.

“I don’t see a short-term fix, and I’ve thought about this a lot,” Lindo said.

It’s the elephant in the room at Santa Anita, and the elephant is odds-on.

Follow Kevin Modesti on Twitter (formerly X) @KevinModesti.

​ Orange County Register