Synthetic voices for the future

During lunch at the Media Lab last week, I told a friend that synthesized voices will never sound like the real thing. It was in the context of machinima, and an idea that I have been thinking about for the past five years (see the section "3D Modding, 3D Media, on my essay, "Meeting The Second Wave").

"Have you heard Roger Ebert's new voice?" he asked. I hadn't, but knew that the film critic/commentator was unable to speak, owing to the terrible effects of cancer. "Check it out, it's amazing," he said. "They used old clips from his TV shows to build a library for computerized speech."

Intrigued, I did. A demo featuring Roger and his wife, originally played on the Oprah Winfrey show, shows what it's like:



Note there are two synthesized voices he uses -- a synthetic male voice from a standard voice software program, and a new product developed by a Scottish company, CereProc. For decades, until the effects of cancer killed his voice, Roger co-hosted a popular television show that covered new film releases. Through the program, he developed a wonderfully smooth talking and debating voice (he frequently sparred and joked with his first co-host, the late Gene Siskel). CereProc was able to leverage this library of sound, so when Roger types a sentence on his laptop, the program "reads" out what he said, stitching together words from his old television programs.

Is the new speech technology from CereProc perfect? No. But it's much better than the synthetic male voice, and really shows where the technology is heading. I can see people in the future "training" a synthesizer using their own voice (or old audio/video clips) for all sorts of functions. It will be a godsend for people who have lost their ability to speak, but can also be applied to services ranging from voice mail/IVR, news programs based on the "voices" of famous (or obscure) people, and machinima.

More blogging about virtual worlds:

• Hug a Pug: A virtual world lesson for the real world music industry
• The Tiger Woods accident simulated in 3D shows the future of newscasts
• The open-ended first-person shooter: A template for 21st century storytelling?
• Microsoft's virtual worlds strategy: It's the 'Spatial Web', not Second Life
• My new media manifesto: "Meeting the Second Wave"

My MIT center of gravity shifts to digital media ...

An update on my Sloan Fellows experience: Last summer and fall, the Sloan Fellows curriculum was dominated by the core. For the two electives in the fall, I pushed for Internet/digital media offerings (6.898/Linked Data Ventures and my G-Lab project, which involved helping a Vietnamese Internet company develop their infrastructure and mobile strategies). Now, with the elective firehose on full, I am taking as many digital media-related classes as I can, with an emphasis on team-based coursework that involves product development and real business plans.

I am taking two classes at the Media Lab (MAS.664/Media Ventures, MAS.571/Social Television), one class (CMS.863J/Computer Games and Simulations for Investigation and Education) cross-listed under Comparative Media Studies/Course 9/Course 11, plus two Sloan classes that directly involve software and online media (Business of Software and Digital Platforms and New Enterprises). That leaves the single H1 core (Global Strategy) and a great law-focused class, Basic Business Law, Tilted Toward Finance. Here's a brief video entry explaining some of them:



For people who are wondering how I can take so many classes at once, the answer is I am "listening" (MIT's term for auditing) two of them.

Am I crazy for attempting to take so many project-based courses? Maybe. I leave my home at 7 in the morning, attend class and have team meetings all day, and in the last week, haven't gotten home until 8 or 9 pm. But this is my last semester at MIT. I won't get another opportunity to study under these faculty, or work on such a wide variety of interesting projects with teams at Sloan, the Media Lab, and even MIT undergraduates (the CMS course only has two or three other grad students, everyone else is undergrad, mostly Course 6). So far I'm keeping up, and it's exhilarating, but check back with me in a month or two to see how I am doing ...

A new world order, attributed to the Internet

"Governments and their security forces are afraid of the people now. The new generation, the generation of the Internet, is fearless. They want their full rights, and they want life, a dignified life.”

- Shawki al-Qadi, an opposition lawmaker in Yemen

Source: "In Cairo Streets, A Fight For The Arab Future", The New York Times, February 3, 2011

First day of the spring semester ...

Trudging through the snow, and shopping for electives: