points by gcanyon 2 days ago | 0 comments
A nit, but given that this is from a major corporation, and LLMs are supposed to be em-dash-happy, it's surprising (disappointing?) that the announcement uses:
> audio-like music
That's a hyphen. What's "audio-like music" -- music that is almost sound but not quite? Music made from raw audio? :-)
[–] _heimdall 2 days ago
That's a proper use of a hyphen though, an emdash would be wrong.
[–] gcanyon 2 days ago
But it's not, unless you know what "audio-like music" is?
[–] smallerize 2 days ago
I don't think so, and in fact an em dash would be much less confusing.
audio, e.g. music
audio — like music
[–] _heimdall 2 days ago
Oh maybe I did just misread the intent of the sentence? I read it as "something like audio" but yeah that is confusing since that would be all music.
[–] pixelesque 2 days ago
That's a suffix word though, not a pause.
Hyphens should be used to link compound/suffix words, not em dashes.
[–] gcanyon 2 days ago
Agreed that hyphens should be used to indicate compound words, but you're saying that "audio-like" is an intended compound word? Then it's an adjective, modifying "music"? What would that mean?
[–] _heimdall 2 days ago
That was my initial reading and I may have just misread it as them intending it to be compound rather than an aside modifier.
[–] pixelesque 2 days ago
Well okay, not a "compound" per se, but it's a prefix/suffix, which similarly should use hyphens.
[–] IanCal 2 days ago
I think the disagreement here is not whether that’s how you should use hyphens but whether that’s what was intended at all. The term audio-like music makes no sense.
[–] LordDragonfang 2 days ago
I think you're fundamentally missing the point being made here.
Yes, "-like" is commonly used as a suffix, in which case a hyphen is correct. But describing music as "audio-like" is clearly nonsense (music isn't "like" audio, it is audio), so that's not the sense in which it's being used here.
For clarity, the full sentence is:
> Genie 4 is natively multimodal, enabling audio-like music, ambient noises, and interactive dialogue to be simultaneously generated with the world.
[–] oblio 2 days ago
Why does everyone hate colons?
audio: music, ...
[–] gcanyon 2 days ago
No one ever got em-dash cancer…
[–] manbash 2 days ago
> Genie 4 is natively multimodal, enabling audio-like music, ambient noises, and interactive dialogue to be simultaneously generated with the world.
Looks like a hiccup, which created an odd and ambiguous sentence.
[–] trollbridge 2 days ago
There used to be editors who would read press releases to catch this.
[–] istjohn 2 days ago