The idea is actually quite old (as they half-way admit, this is based on a program that was developed on NeXT machines when those were current; the research goe

The idea is actually quite old (as they half-way admit, this is based on a program that was developed on NeXT machines when those were current; the research goes back to the late 60s and 70s). Wikipedia has some background naturally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis#Articulatory_synthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis#Articulatory_... There is also research into using this type of physical modeling for singing[1] and laughing[2], so its not far-fetched to imagine a model that can speak, sing, laugh, shout, and perform any of the various vocal articulations humans can make. The main obstacles seem to be figuring out how to control the model over time, how to smoothly transition between control states, and how to capture enough fine details to cross the uncanny valley. [1] http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~prc/SingingSynth.html http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~prc/SingingSynth.html [2] https://ccrma.stanford.edu/groups/mcd/publish/files/2013-nime-lolol.pdf https://ccrma.stanford.edu/groups/mcd/publish/files/2013-nim...