DailyDirt: Computers To Talk For Us

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Computers help people communicate all the time, but they can be really helpful for people who have no voice at all (eg. Stephen Hawking). Synthetic speech technologies are getting better -- with better algorithms to generate more human-like speech and cloud-based systems that allow processor-intensive software to run on handheld devices. Here are just a few examples of some computer-created voices. If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.
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Filed Under: asr, blizzard challenge, speech synthesis, stephen hawking, text-to-speech, translation, voice


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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 19 Nov 2012 @ 5:25pm

    Why are computer voices all evil?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlwdwS5-L3c

    The Red Queen is a British girl... and I can just hear my GPS saying "you're all going to die" in a little kid's voice now. CREEPY!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    R-66Y, 19 Nov 2012 @ 7:54pm

    Talk? We can sing!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    ron, 10 Dec 2015 @ 10:47pm

    The current best text to speech software is Text Speaker. It has customizable pronunciation, reads anything on your screen, and it even has talking reminders. It is great for learning languages as it highlights the words as they are being read. The bundled voices are well priced and sound very human. Voices are available in English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, and more. Easily converts blogs, email, e-books, and more to MP3 or for listening instantly.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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