shame no sample of this supposed voice all hype to be honest by the sound of it
On 4 Jul 2012, at 14:00, "Phil Vlasak" <phi...@bex.net> wrote: > Android Director: 'We Have the First Natural-Sounding Synthesized Voice in > the World' > July 4, 2012 | > Hugo Barra, Android's director of product management, was cool and composed > as he shared Android's latest killer features. > giving Google a voice is very use case-driven. If you're in a situation > where you're asking a question with your voice, there's a significant chance > you're in a somewhat constrained environment. You're on the go, you're > rushing. You might be in the car. You're carrying something else with your > hands. You can't really pause to look at your screen or type. > > So speaking it back to you seems pretty natural, right? That's how humans > communicate. But we also wanted to do that only when we had a text-to-speech > engine that was extremely high quality. And what you hear today, if you ask > Google a question on Jelly Bean, is quite spectacular. There isn't a > text-to-speech engine, as we call them, that has accuracy as high as that. > > We have built a text-to-speech engine that's networked-based, meaning it uses > a very large amount of data to compose a spoken answer. You know, purely from > a synthesis perspective - forget about answering questions - it takes a very > large amount of data to generate a synthesized audio of someone speaking. But > we also have a matching engine that sits on the device. It's the exact same > voice but with a very different computational technique. You'll always hear > the same voice whether it's speaking back to you in a connected use-case, in > which it comes from the server, or a disconnected offline use-case, in which > it would just be synthesized on the device. > > Wired: What makes a good voice? Did you model it after someone? > > Barra: I actually come from speech recognition, and I worked in speech in > general for a very long time. So don't let me talk about this all day. But > it's a very, very intricate process. And it starts with finding a voice > talent. > > Wired: A real person? > > Barra: Finding a person who has a voice that just nails it. And in this day > and age, it's actually a very different voice talent than the voice talents > that power most of the voice technology that exists today. A lot of today's > voice technology comes from the companies you'd expect Nuance and Microsoft > and others. That technology is built for a telephony world, for a customer > service environment where you need this posh, powerful voice a branding > approach to things. > > We set out to create the very first conversational voice, and I think we > nailed that. I think we have the very first high-quality, natural-sounding, > conversational, synthesized voice in the entire world. > > Between a bunch of designers, engineers and speech scientists, we sat down > and tried to describe the personality of the person, the personality of the > voice that we were trying to create. We wrote down "friendly" [as a product > goal] and there were literally 15 different ways to describe what friendly > means. So that was the brief that we gave to a casting agency, and they came > back with 10 candidates. We recorded those 10 candidates, and we did a bunch > of blind tests with all sorts of different people, and we voted it down to > two people. And then we recorded more of those people, and we did some tests > and we decided "OK, we're going to go with this one person." > > I don't actually know her name. In fact, no one knows her name. > > Wired: It's a secret? > > Barra: It's supposed to be. It's not something that you publicize because it > needs to be the voice of Google. And then you create the voice, you collect a > lot of data. What we did is an industry first. > > Wired: While it does sound more human-like, it doesn't have a lot of > personality in the sense that it doesn't say funny things back to you. It > doesn't deliver jokes. > > Barra: So nothing to do with the voice itself, but what it says and how it > says it? > > Wired: Exactly. Is that something you guys were looking to add in the future, > or is that something you wanted to leave out? > > Barra: It's very deliberately not making jokes with you. Google is a neutral > party it's not your friend, secretary or sister. It's not your mom. It's not > your girlfriend or boyfriend. It is an information retrieval entity. You ask, > we respond. And it's very important that this entity be impartial, and adding > jokes and other mannerisms to the voice would take away from that. > > It's something that we've talked about, and it's pretty clear. There hasn't > been a single person in the company who thinks we should have gone the other > direction. > > http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/google-android-hugo-barra-interview/all/ > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
