5 ms·

Personally, I find I dislike any "emotion" added to TTS -- I find Alexa's emo markup, a la: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/blogs/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/201

Personally, I find I dislike any "emotion" added to TTS -- I find Alexa's emo markup, a la: https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/blogs/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/2019/11/new-alexa-emotions-and-speaking-styles https://developer.amazon.com/en-US/blogs/alexa/alexa-skills-... to be disturbing and without much added value. (Such as used with games like Jeopardy.) If used, the application of these tags needs to be both meticulous in its proper context, somewhat non-deterministically applied, and with randomized prosody. Repeated usage of the same overstated emotive content is annoying and unnatural (worse than a "flat" presentation) and only serves to underscore the underlying inflexible conversational content.

teilo 6y ago
I agree. All I care about is that the pronunciation is contextually correct, and smooth. Accents are fine, and necessary. But I don't want a non-human simulating human emotions. Now if they aren't simulated, that's another story...
- jandrese 6y ago
  Honestly, how do you expect to advance if you don't like Genuine People Personalities®? Who wouldn't want a door that is eternally cheerful about opening up for you? Or a paranoid android?
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    The paranoid android, that's who wouldn't like a paranoid android. Particularly, wouldn't like being one.
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  +1. And I know I'm in the minority here, but I prefer it if computers don't use actual human voices at all. I like my computer to sound like a computer. (I wouldn't go so far as to add distracting retro affectations though.) I'm visually impaired, and I often use a screen reader when browsing the web. Here's my favorite voice to use with a screen reader: https://mwcampbell.us/tmp/hn-comment-20200515-1.mp3 https://mwcampbell.us/tmp/hn-comment-20200515-1.mp3
  - freediver 6y ago
    Wow that is profound. Sounds a bit like when listening to podcasts at 2x speed.
  - specialist 6y ago
    That's amazing. Thank you for sharing. I could not comprehend that. I tried a few times. IIRC, people can learn to "speed hear". Make me think of the Star Trek TNG Bynars meets the FEDEX speed talker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11001001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11001001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1o2wg5wqko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1o2wg5wqko
    - mwcampbell 6y ago
      I only run my TTS moderately fast. I have blind friends who run it faster. I have some vision, so I only use a screen reader part of the time, and not for programming. Also, I think speech synthesizers can do a more consistent job of enunciating at high speed than humans can. I didn't quite understand everything the FedEx speed talker was saying.
ge96 6y ago
I take it you didn't like the movie Her ha
- dmix 6y ago
  Her was voiced by a human with real emotions.
  - ge96 6y ago
    Well SJ is a real person yeah, and yeah probably missed the point of this not an "AI companion" just the process of turning text to sound.
npunt 6y ago
Agree, there's definitely a risk for uncanny valley in voice assistants around tone. Emotion in particular is an area where I think we won't have sophisticated enough systems to address for some time, which means it's mostly something that makes things unintentionally worse. A few of these downsides include: 1. tone has a different valence than what the subject matter requires ('Sure thing! The funeral home number is...'), which reminds you of and amplifies negative feelings 2. tone is used to get something from you, which makes you feel manipulated 3. tone is uniformly applied, which through repeat exposure makes the world feel false Totally agree that randomized prosody would help aid in making assistants more natural; tempo and rhythm don't have as much emotional weight. I'm not sure explicit markup is the right way to approach the problem, given its lack of understanding of user context and state of mind, and the likelihood developers execute poorly. It feels like a solution at the wrong level of abstraction... getting in sync with a user's emotions is a pretty high bar.
specialist 6y ago
Thank you for sharing. I was recently foraging for better TTS and somehow missed these. These Alexa voices are amazing. I recently got addicted to podcasts and want to branch into audiobooks. Alas, most narrators' voices drive me nuts. Especially the free content I've found. I now think I'd quite like the Australian accents for consuming ebooks via TTS. It's both familiar enough and different enough that it somehow bridges my own uncanny valley. (FWIW, I speak PNW English, allegedly neutral for North Americans.)
- DanBC 6y ago
  Have you listened to anything put out by the BBC? How did you find those accents? For fiction are any of these available and in not-annoying accents? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtlx https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtlx
  - specialist 6y ago
    Nice. Big fan of Andrew Scott, so I'll try this reading for a while. Thank you. It just occurred to me that my hangup might be fiction vs non-fiction. Fictional readings might bug me in the same way the cartoons of Garfield and Dilbert bug me; their voices don't align with my imagination. I've powered thru a handful of biographies (eg Robert Caro's The Power Broker) and got a lot out of them. I only cringed when someone affects a different voice for written quotes. Whereas each time I tried a Mark Twain audio book, I wanted to kick a puppy. I used to read a lot to my kid (and other relations). But I really didn't like those books on tape. (Maybe because no one ever read to me, sniff.) Thanks again. I love this (being uncomfortable). Now I'm gonna push myself to finish some fiction audiobooks. See if I can get into the proper frame of mind.

teilo 6y ago

I agree. All I care about is that the pronunciation is contextually correct, and smooth. Accents are fine, and necessary. But I don't want a non-human simulating human emotions. Now if they aren't simulated, that's another story...

jandrese 6y ago
Honestly, how do you expect to advance if you don't like Genuine People Personalities®? Who wouldn't want a door that is eternally cheerful about opening up for you? Or a paranoid android?
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  The paranoid android, that's who wouldn't like a paranoid android. Particularly, wouldn't like being one.
mwcampbell 6y ago
+1. And I know I'm in the minority here, but I prefer it if computers don't use actual human voices at all. I like my computer to sound like a computer. (I wouldn't go so far as to add distracting retro affectations though.) I'm visually impaired, and I often use a screen reader when browsing the web. Here's my favorite voice to use with a screen reader: https://mwcampbell.us/tmp/hn-comment-20200515-1.mp3 https://mwcampbell.us/tmp/hn-comment-20200515-1.mp3
- freediver 6y ago
  Wow that is profound. Sounds a bit like when listening to podcasts at 2x speed.
- specialist 6y ago
  That's amazing. Thank you for sharing. I could not comprehend that. I tried a few times. IIRC, people can learn to "speed hear". Make me think of the Star Trek TNG Bynars meets the FEDEX speed talker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11001001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11001001 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1o2wg5wqko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1o2wg5wqko
  - mwcampbell 6y ago
    I only run my TTS moderately fast. I have blind friends who run it faster. I have some vision, so I only use a screen reader part of the time, and not for programming. Also, I think speech synthesizers can do a more consistent job of enunciating at high speed than humans can. I didn't quite understand everything the FedEx speed talker was saying.

ge96 6y ago

I take it you didn't like the movie Her ha

dmix 6y ago
Her was voiced by a human with real emotions.
- ge96 6y ago
  Well SJ is a real person yeah, and yeah probably missed the point of this not an "AI companion" just the process of turning text to sound.

npunt 6y ago

Agree, there's definitely a risk for uncanny valley in voice assistants around tone. Emotion in particular is an area where I think we won't have sophisticated enough systems to address for some time, which means it's mostly something that makes things unintentionally worse. A few of these downsides include: 1. tone has a different valence than what the subject matter requires ('Sure thing! The funeral home number is...'), which reminds you of and amplifies negative feelings 2. tone is used to get something from you, which makes you feel manipulated 3. tone is uniformly applied, which through repeat exposure makes the world feel false Totally agree that randomized prosody would help aid in making assistants more natural; tempo and rhythm don't have as much emotional weight. I'm not sure explicit markup is the right way to approach the problem, given its lack of understanding of user context and state of mind, and the likelihood developers execute poorly. It feels like a solution at the wrong level of abstraction... getting in sync with a user's emotions is a pretty high bar.

specialist 6y ago

Thank you for sharing. I was recently foraging for better TTS and somehow missed these. These Alexa voices are amazing. I recently got addicted to podcasts and want to branch into audiobooks. Alas, most narrators' voices drive me nuts. Especially the free content I've found. I now think I'd quite like the Australian accents for consuming ebooks via TTS. It's both familiar enough and different enough that it somehow bridges my own uncanny valley. (FWIW, I speak PNW English, allegedly neutral for North Americans.)

DanBC 6y ago
Have you listened to anything put out by the BBC? How did you find those accents? For fiction are any of these available and in not-annoying accents? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtlx https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtlx
- specialist 6y ago
  Nice. Big fan of Andrew Scott, so I'll try this reading for a while. Thank you. It just occurred to me that my hangup might be fiction vs non-fiction. Fictional readings might bug me in the same way the cartoons of Garfield and Dilbert bug me; their voices don't align with my imagination. I've powered thru a handful of biographies (eg Robert Caro's The Power Broker) and got a lot out of them. I only cringed when someone affects a different voice for written quotes. Whereas each time I tried a Mark Twain audio book, I wanted to kick a puppy. I used to read a lot to my kid (and other relations). But I really didn't like those books on tape. (Maybe because no one ever read to me, sniff.) Thanks again. I love this (being uncomfortable). Now I'm gonna push myself to finish some fiction audiobooks. See if I can get into the proper frame of mind.