Should we create a catch-all tag for vocal synthesizer characters?

We currently have quite many tags for various pieces of vocal synthesizing software - they can be seen in the list_of_vocal_synthesizers. However, we have no real way to search for characters associated with the software itself - we have copytags like Vocaloid, but the problem with them is that:
1) They only cover one specific software,
2) Original characters created for songs using this technology are also covered by those software tags (think of Aimaina or Osage (Inabakumori), who are not Vocaloids themselves, but are present in many songs by their authors),
2a) Similarly, characters in costumes that reference a song's PV also get those tags - see post #6219029, which features Yu Gi Oh! characters in headphones from Magnet.
3) Nowadays, many characters have voicebanks in more than one specific synthesizer - Hatsune Miku, the poster girl of Vocaloid, now is only developed as a Piapro Studio entity, and Kasane Teto, one of the most popular UTAU characters, recently got a series of SynthV voicebanks - which means the copyright the character belongs to can be muddied.

Additionally, subcultures of such software often merge - from earliest days, we got songs like Triple Baka, which featured a Vocaloid and an UTAU, covers of songs from one software to another, or shared art like post #5032611.

The tag would function similarly to Virtual YouTuber.

Yes, why not? I'd like propose a tag virtual singer instead. Nevertheless, voice synthesizer feels like an object instead of character.

KagayakuShiningGate said:
"Virtual singer" isn't a commonly used name for such software, while "voice synthesizer" is. It also is the name that we are currently using in related wikis.

The second option will be fine.

"Virtual singer" isn't a commonly used name for such software, while "voice synthesizer" is. It also is the name that we are currently using in related wikis.

Virtual Youtuber is already a questionable tag, because it's completely meta, you have absolutely no way of determining at a glance if a particular anime girl is someone's streaming model or a video game character or just a random OC. It should've been nuked years ago before it got too big to get rid of.

A "voice synthesizer" tag has the same problem of nothing being tagged with it having anything in common outside of meta knowledge not identifiable just by looking at it.

blindVigil said:

Virtual Youtuber is already a questionable tag, because it's completely meta, you have absolutely no way of determining at a glance if a particular anime girl is someone's streaming model or a video game character or just a random OC. It should've been nuked years ago before it got too big to get rid of.

A "voice synthesizer" tag has the same problem of nothing being tagged with it having anything in common outside of meta knowledge not identifiable just by looking at it.

I mean, it's not like we don't have other generic-copyright tags, as that tag has been referred to, as idol has been accused of the same, and we also have voice actor. I still personally believe there's use in that tag because it serves as a context clue, as more often than not the thing that draws the line between whether you're able to identify who someone is in an image is whether or not it is mentioned that they are a VTuber somewhere.

But I do agree that a voice_synthesizer tag wouldn't exactly be useful. The only reason why you'd want to make that tag is to solve an issue I've noticed before with some tagging associated with them, and that is that sometimes Vocaloid is basically used as an overarching tag for voice synthesizers, because said taggers are unaware that Vocaloid isn't a generic term. But, as proven by the nuking of the gen_x_pokemon tags, making a band-aid tag to solve an issue that shouldn't exist in the first place isn't a valid reason. Just keep the List of Vocal Synthesizers wiki updated, maybe even include a section for companies that make vocal synthesizers and voicebanks, and things should be fine enough.

I personally think our tagging policy for vocal synthesizer engines started out sensible and ended up being a gigantic headache. It made sense when you only had to worry about Vocaloid, UTAU, Voiceroid, and rarely CeVIO, and all of the characters were relatively separated. Now, there are a bunch of overlapping engines with characters that cross over all the time, ultimately clustering around two broad fandoms: singing synthesizers and speech synthesizers.

The most extreme example of this is the Touhoku family: Touhoku Zunko, Touhoku Kiritan, Touhoku Itako, and their familiar Zundamon. They are all related characters part of the Zunda Horizon project (untagged). Here's the sum total of copyright tags that can theoretically apply to them: Vocaloid, Voiceroid, CeVIO, UTAU, NEUTRINO, VOICEVOX, VOICEPEAK, and Seiren Voice. Sometimes they get alternate costumes when ported to a new engine, but not often. How do you tag them? Basically arbitrarily, I guess. Usually it will be whatever engine the uploader most commonly associates with them, but occasionally they'll randomly add other engines they are compatible with.

While most affected characters just have one or two additional engines rather than 8, they invariably run into problems, including:

• The classic case of Yuzuki Yukari inconsistently having Vocaloid, Voiceroid, or both as her "main" tag for over a decade, people tagging both on posts that are clearly only about singing synths or speech synths, and people being unable to decide whether to keep her other "main" copyrights when she's ported
• Otomachi Una (TalkEX) having an entire TalkEX copyright tag for one character that exclusively interacts with other speech synths, and then that same design being ported to Voiceroid anyway (and because the character comes from Vocaloid, she gets tagged with Vocaloid on and off)
• Koharu Rikka's CeVIO talk voicebank being tagged absolutely every time, even in Synthesizer V fanart - to the extent that her most popular original is tagged as Mira (CeVIO)... when it's a Synthesizer V track
• Any picture that's just concerned with the broader fandom and not engines (e.g. post #3901235, post #5141307, post #3417839, post #6223652) ends up analogous to tagging Nintendo/Xbox/Playstation/PC on any big game release

It's a tangled mess that I don't know how to begin to solve, but the proposal in this thread would at least alleviate the last issue.

The Zunda Horizon project example is part of the reason why I brought up "maybe even include a section for companies that make vocal synthesizers and voicebanks" for the wiki list, because in some cases it would probably be simpler to just tag the project or company a character is from instead of just the engines, leaving the engines for when you're specifically looking for a particular version. But at the same time, I also recognize that'd probably exacerbate the situation even further, and probably justify the creation of a voice_synthesizer tag, because it'd be fragmenting the tags one would need to use in order to find vocaloids. Again, it's why VOCALOID is sometimes basically used as an overarching tag, because most folks just see these synthesizers as vocaloids. It's why Teto is still referred to as a vocaloid in a lot of circles. And if we were to apply tagging procedures from elsewhere, that could probably cause issue.

Like, let's think about Hatsune Miku (NT) for example. She's the first voicebank using Piapro Studio, she's fundamentally moved on from VOCALOID, but if you check every single one of her posts, she's still tagged with Vocaloid because that's what people associate her the most with, given all her previous voicebanks. Per usual tagging procedures as seen elsewhere on the site, NT's posts should not have the VOCALOID tag unless appropriate. But that'd probably inspire a bunch of complaining.

When it comes to most things, it'd probably be just worth maintaining the rickety status quo, but with the points raised, I can't deny that a voice_synthesizer would be useful for broader fandom stuff and enabling copyright cleanup if need be.

My policy with tagging has always been using the copyright that the design belongs to (of course), then secondarily a "main" tag with the reasoning that people are more likely to use it as an umbrella when searching.

E.g. Yuzuki Yukari, who is probably the epitome of this problem and has designs in VOCALOID, VOICEROID, CeVIO, A.I. VOICE, and Seiren Voice.

If the post contains a derivative (A.I. VOICE, Shizuku, Nagi), I'd tag the copyright it belongs to. Then I'd also add VOICEROID with the reasoning that people will use that as the umbrella tag. The Vocaloid vs Voiceroid thing is muddy but I tend to avoid Vocaloid if the image is clearly more Voiceroid oriented, which is usually the case with Yukari.

Crypton officially refers to the Piapro family as "virtual singers", but I'd be hesitant to use this on Danbooru due to the potential confusion with virtual Youtubers. Vsinger sees that problem from time to time. Plus it wouldn't accurately apply to speech synthesizers. I'd be fine going with "voice synth" or "vocal synth(esizer)".

But if using an umbrella tag isn't feasible, I suppose the next best thing to do would be to standardize what counts as the "main" tag for each character and include that in all posts containing derivatives. I'd propose going by whatever software they were originally released under. But the problem with this is that Yukari seems to have been released as both Vocaloid and Voiceroid at the same time. And Otomachi Una who was originally a Vocaloid but is now more commonly used in a Voiceroid context.