Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2001 16:42:41 -0400
From: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor)
Subject: Software Called Capable of Copying Any Human Voice
To: freematt@coil.com (Matthew Gaylor)


[Note from Matthew Gaylor:  People may end up looking like Borg as 
even I'd consider installing a digital signature device on my larynx.]


"Software Called Capable of Copying Any Human Voice"

Permanent link to this news article: 
http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news_single.html?id%3D3 
85

Software Called Capable of Copying Any Human Voice

New York Times, July 31, 2001

Voice cloning software -- replicating a person's voice so perfectly 
that the human ear cannot tell the difference -- has been developed 
by AT&T.

The text-to-speech software, called Natural Voices, allows for 
recordings of a person's voice to utter things that the person never 
actually said.

The advances raise several sticky issues. Who, for example, owns the 
rights to a celebrity's voice? Will synthesized voices compet with 
those of live actors? Could synthesized voices eventually be capable 
of tricking people into thinking that they were getting phone calls 
or digital audio recordings from people they know?

To build the software that recreates unique voices, engineers record 
up to 40 hours of readings.

Other companies and research centers, like I.B.M. Research and 
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products, are also experimenting with this 
technique - which is called concatenative speech synthesis - to 
improve the quality of text-to-speech software.

###



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