Phoneme Approach For Text-to-Speech in SCIAM

jscribner writes "Scientific American is running a feature on IBM Research's Text-to-Speech technology. It discusses the current state of affairs in this field, and describes IBM's phoneme based 'Supervoices' approach. The IBM site provides a demonstration, allowing users to enter text to be rendered to speech, as well as providing several examples in other languages."

Comments

speaking of the /. effect

[trelanexiph]

I guess IBM didn't have much to say on the matter.

IBM Text-to-Speech Research Demonstration

Input Communcations Error.

You have reached this page because of an severe input error. It appears that the client didn't connect to the server. Please inform the system administrator using the feedback mechanism on the main home page.

Re:Does the poster have something against IBM

[borgdows]

It looks like IBM is not running their servers on a dead fly ;)

This could be a hit...

[WegianWarrior]

...if they make some sort of interface between e-books and text-to-speech. Instant 'sound-book' *smiles*. No longer do the visualy impared have to wait for someone to make the soundbook for them, no longer do I need to actually read the long, booring documents people send me at work.

With the right technical document, this could cure insomnia as well...

Re:PHONEME, y'all, not *phenome

[WeeBull]

.. and often uttered in distressed tones at the end of a night out, usually by desperate males attempting to re-attach themselves to some female. PHONEME! PLEASE PHONEME! I LOVE YOU! PHONEME!

Here's another text-to-speech site

[wiggys]

http://www.research.att.com/~ttsweb/cgi-bin/ttsdem o

Some of the voices sound okay I guess. Better than Stephen Hawking anyway.

Re:AT&T have been doing this for a while!

[wiggys]

The Currah speech unit for the Spectrum was hilarious. It came with a free game which was supposed to say "The Banshee wails at you but nothing happens".

It actually sounded like "Shbansheehailsacthoowawaaaawaaaens"

I remember you could also turn it on while you were programming, so evertime you pressed a key it would say "ONE ZERO PRINT QUOTE ACH EE ELL ELL O QUOTE ENTER TWO ZERO ENTER RUN ENTER". I used to drive me batty. It was one of those eighties things which you thought was "cool" at the time, but had no practical use. I think they were only ever invented so you could show your neighbours how advanced your computer is: "LOOK, IT CAN TALK TO ME!"

*blush*

[WeeBull]

Uhm, ok, who else did just spent 10 minutes (thoroughly) checking if IBM filter naughty words at the text-to-speech interface? Getting the female voices to utter favourable phrases regarding to one's studlyness, perhaps?

Oh ... just me? *blush*

ack. no good

[lingqi]

Unless the female voice can render the below lines with feelings, I don't think it's a mature technology.

give me! give me! oh! I am coming!! OHHHH!

Actually I did try it. the result (of the above line) was not spectacular. I am impressed with the quality in general, though. Tried "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken," but that needs to be said with feelings as well, I suppose.

Oh yeah, this kind of technology is excellent for a computer to read out the sites to you, if, say, your eyes are tired. It should work wonders for slashdot, even.

Listen to "US female 2"

[infolib]

uttering the sequence:
"Aargh! I've been slashdotted!"

Bandwidth sponsored by danish research funding...

Re:Phonemes not phenomes

[OpenSourced]

First time I sae the headline, I thought it read Pheromone approach to Text-to-speech. Now that could be some interesting concept!

Conversation at IBM

[mivok]

Tech guy 1> Hey, look at my cool new web based speech thingy that lets 1000's of users web pages talk to them!
Tech guy 2> Bah.. bet it wouldnt support 2 people
Tech guy 1> It would!
Tech guy 2> Prove it... (loud musical sound of doom follows) post it to slashdot
Tech guy 1> Ulp... (reluctantly taps away on the keyboard)

5 minutes later, strained sounds can faintly be heard from the smoking pile of rubble that used to be the server room, and the fried piece of circuit board that used to be the shiny new voice system crackles begin to wane, still trying to come up with 500,000 convincing renditions of "goatsec"

A speak center

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to a call center, IBM has this Bangalore/India-based speak-center with thousands of males and females speaking the text you entered into a microphone...

Not very good TTS

[DulcetTone]

The quality of AT&T's TTS or SpeechWorks' TTS is far more advanced. I had some fun with Speechworks' one and posted samples:

What I wish On-Star would actually say

A slightly-edited announcement calling our Bulldog to attend to a special matter

tone