9 ms·

It's interesting that TTS is getting better and better while consumer access to it is more and more restricted. A decade ago there were a half dozen totally sep

It's interesting that TTS is getting better and better while consumer access to it is more and more restricted. A decade ago there were a half dozen totally separate TTS engines I could install on my phone and my Kindle came with its own that worked on any book.

mrec 4y ago
To the Kindle thing, I wonder if the rise of audiobooks as a product killed the latter off to remove competition.
- causality0 4y ago
  Oh absolutely, the same way Amazon removed physical buttons so they could use them as leverage for their overpriced Oasis reader. My twelve year old Kindle 3 has TTS, page turn buttons, and a headphone jack, and it cost a hundred bucks.
- exhilaration 4y ago
  It was a rights issue. The Authors' Guild argued that TTS required audio rights. Here's an article from 2009: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2009/mar/01/authors-guild-blocks-kindle-voice https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2009/mar/01/auth...
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Just one more example of copyright stifling progress, innovation, and accessibility. The Authors Guild doesn't screw over the public by exploiting our insane copyright laws as often as the MPA or RIAA, but they've had their moments. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/09/authors-guild-sues-google https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/09/authors-guild-sues-goo... https://www.cnn.com/2011/09/13/tech/web/authors-guild-book-digitization/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2011/09/13/tech/web/authors-guild-book-d... https://popula.com/2022/01/22/what-kind-of-writer-accuses-libraries-of-stealing/ https://popula.com/2022/01/22/what-kind-of-writer-accuses-li...
    - captaincaveman 4y ago
      Or publisher could license the audio right from the content creators, so they get compensated for the increase in profits that the tech/publisher is making?
      - muhehe 4y ago
        If it's audiobook, then yes, it's sort of a performance and you could argue they need different licence. But with tts you basically create the audio with your own means on your device. But you still bought the book, so there is you profit. If I read a book to my child, would you want me to buy audio license?
        rland 4y ago
        I know it’s a rhetorical example, but given how stingy the copyright regime is: yes, yes they would. You maybe could manage a 20% off credit for the child’s listening rights.
        captaincaveman 4y ago
        Whats the difference between Audiobook and realtime text to audio translation, isn't the outcome/experience the same? The difference between you reading and the software is one is 'mechanical', whether you want to constrain someone doing that in the rights you grant is debatable. Copyright enables you (gives the creator the 'freedom' to choose) to make such choices, its what people choose to limit is the problem, as they tend to be very stingy.
        autoexec 4y ago
        > Whats the difference between Audiobook and realtime text to audio translation, isn't the outcome/experience the same? The "outcome" (text is read aloud) is the same if you read it aloud to yourself. Really the difference is that when a publisher releases an audiobook they hire someone (sometimes multiple someones) often an actor or the original author to sit in a recording studio and recite. They pay for things like studio time, sound engineering, editing, the narrators time, sometimes music or foley, etc. It's very much a different product. If you have a book and you recite it, or if you pay someone to come into your home and read it to you, or you get a bunch of software and have your computer read it for you, that's your right and at your own expense in terms of time, money, and effort. Some kind of text to speech software is expected on pretty much every device. Including such features in devices or using those features (especially the accessibility features) of your own devices isn't copyright infringement, shouldn't open you up to demands for payments from publishers, and is in no way comparable to a professionally produced audiobook. Maybe one day the tech will advance to where a program can gather the context needed to speak with and convey the correct emotion for each line and will be capable of delivering a solid performance, but right now we're lucky if more than 2/3 of the words are even pronounced correctly and the inflection isn't bizarre enough to make you question what was being said or distract you from the material.
  - rob74 4y ago
    Next you will need audio rights if you want to read a bedtime story to your kids...
narrationbox 4y ago
Your average mobile processor doesn't have anywhere near enough processing power to run a state of the art text to speech network in real-time. Most text to speech on mobile hardware are stream from the cloud.
- ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
  The parent didn't mention real-time as a requirement. Offline rendering would well suffice.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Dr. Sbaitso ran on a modest 386. Mobile device processors generally eclipse that and could definitely generate better quality TTS.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Not only is state of the art TTS much more demanding (and much much higher quality) than Dr. Sbaitso[0], but so are the not-quite-so-good TTS engines in both Android and iOS. That said, having only skimmed the paper I didn’t notice a discussion of the compute requirements for usage (just training), but it did say it was a 28.7 million parameter model, so I recon this could be used in real-time on a phone. [0] judging by the videos of Dr. Sbaitso on YouTube, it was only one step up from the intro to Impossible Mission on the Commodore 64.
    - rob74 4y ago
      Ok, I get it, state of the art TTS uses AI techniques and so eats processing power, buuuuut seeing that much older efforts which ran on devices like old PCs, the Amiga, the original Macintosh, the Kindle etc. used much less CPU for speech that you could (mostly) understand without problems, it may be worth exploring if it's possible to write a better "dumb" (i.e. non-AI) speech synthesizer?
      - ben_w 4y ago
ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
Well, that's no surprise, because governments/corporations (in fact, The Govporation these days) strive to keep the status quo of being way beyond the capabilities of the people, hence the monopoly on weapon-grade tools - and I seriously think that AI-produced speech that is indistinguishable from the human one is a weapon-grade tool.
- ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
  - simonh 4y ago
    “Govporation” is exactly the sort of agenda driven torturous linguistic manipulation that the phrase “call a spade a spade” mocks.
    - ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
      Parse it as "seemingly independent governments of the world and international big business blended and interlocked together to the point of being indistinguishable" to ease the torture.
      - simonh 4y ago
        We have a word for that, although it's meaning is a bit broader. Society.
        guerrilla 4y ago
        No, that excludes labor, i.e. the majority of people. Land, labor, capitol and state as per classical economics (Ricardo, Smith, etc.)
        simonh 4y ago
        We're democracies, we vote. Oh also it's land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship in classical economics.
phh 4y ago
I agree so much, that I've started learning ML to make a decent opensource many-languages TTS working on smartphones. But really, the situation is pretty good, with a lot of code and dataset available as opensource. Notably, if you're not constrained to smartphones and the like, you can run on your computer quite a number of modern models, see for instance https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS/ https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS/ (which itself contains many different models). The work that needs to be done is """just""" to turn those models into something suitable for smartphones (which will most likely include re-training), and to plug them back into Android's TTS API.
- follower 4y ago
  If you've not already encountered them I'd definitely encourage you to check out these Free/Open Source projects too: * Larynx: https://github.com/rhasspy/larynx/ https://github.com/rhasspy/larynx/ * OpenTTS: https://github.com/synesthesiam/opentts https://github.com/synesthesiam/opentts * Likely Mimic3 in the near future: https://mycroft.ai/blog/mimic-3-preview/ https://mycroft.ai/blog/mimic-3-preview/ Larynx in particular has a focus on "faster than real-time" while OpenTTS is an attempt to package & provide common REST API to all Free/Open Source Text To Speech systems so the FLOSS ecosystem can build on previous work supported by short-lived business interests, rather than start from scratch every time. AIUI the developer of the first two projects now works for Mycroft AI & is involved in the development of Mimic3 which seems very promising given how much of an impact on quality his solo work has had in just the past couple of years or so.
pomian 4y ago
This reminds me of voice dictation history. I remember using dragon and other upstarts, on a 486dx notebook. I could discuss with the laptop, ask instructions, receive answers, and control verbally all options, actions, and programs. At the same time, do dictation in different fields of study - training required in geology words or engineering words for example - which was remarkably accurate. So you could turn on your notebook; start running programs, verbally type (dictate) a report , save, format, print, it email it - then turn on a music player or watch a movie. All without touching a mouse or keyboard. This was in a busy room, with a party by the way. Everyone said, just wait until computer speeds are faster! But all the software was bought out by Apple, Microsoft. It didn't get improved on for over 20-25 years, and still not really f functioning. (Except siri Google etc.) the
- follower 4y ago
  In case it's of interest, when I last explored this topic in terms of the Free/Open Source ecosystem I was very impressed with how well VOSK-API performed: https://github.com/alphacep/vosk-api https://github.com/alphacep/vosk-api Here's another project that builds on top of VOSK to provide a tighter integration with Linux: https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation
wintermutestwin 4y ago
Fun fact: If you try to use Siri to read the text of a website to you ("speak screen"), it refuses to do so if you are connected to a car's bluetooth. One of the vast litany of non-AI related Siri flaws that make you wonder how a $2t company can achieve such tragic levels of incompetence.
- moron4hire 4y ago
  That sounds intentional, like trying to prevent "public performances".
- causality0 4y ago
  I wonder if Google has the same limitation. I use that functionality quite often but I do it over the aux input.

mrec 4y ago

To the Kindle thing, I wonder if the rise of audiobooks as a product killed the latter off to remove competition.

causality0 4y ago
Oh absolutely, the same way Amazon removed physical buttons so they could use them as leverage for their overpriced Oasis reader. My twelve year old Kindle 3 has TTS, page turn buttons, and a headphone jack, and it cost a hundred bucks.
exhilaration 4y ago
It was a rights issue. The Authors' Guild argued that TTS required audio rights. Here's an article from 2009: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2009/mar/01/authors-guild-blocks-kindle-voice https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2009/mar/01/auth...
- autoexec 4y ago
  Just one more example of copyright stifling progress, innovation, and accessibility. The Authors Guild doesn't screw over the public by exploiting our insane copyright laws as often as the MPA or RIAA, but they've had their moments. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/09/authors-guild-sues-google https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/09/authors-guild-sues-goo... https://www.cnn.com/2011/09/13/tech/web/authors-guild-book-digitization/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2011/09/13/tech/web/authors-guild-book-d... https://popula.com/2022/01/22/what-kind-of-writer-accuses-libraries-of-stealing/ https://popula.com/2022/01/22/what-kind-of-writer-accuses-li...
  - captaincaveman 4y ago
    Or publisher could license the audio right from the content creators, so they get compensated for the increase in profits that the tech/publisher is making?
    - muhehe 4y ago
      If it's audiobook, then yes, it's sort of a performance and you could argue they need different licence. But with tts you basically create the audio with your own means on your device. But you still bought the book, so there is you profit. If I read a book to my child, would you want me to buy audio license?
      - rland 4y ago
        I know it’s a rhetorical example, but given how stingy the copyright regime is: yes, yes they would. You maybe could manage a 20% off credit for the child’s listening rights.
      - captaincaveman 4y ago
        Whats the difference between Audiobook and realtime text to audio translation, isn't the outcome/experience the same? The difference between you reading and the software is one is 'mechanical', whether you want to constrain someone doing that in the rights you grant is debatable. Copyright enables you (gives the creator the 'freedom' to choose) to make such choices, its what people choose to limit is the problem, as they tend to be very stingy.
        autoexec 4y ago
        > Whats the difference between Audiobook and realtime text to audio translation, isn't the outcome/experience the same? The "outcome" (text is read aloud) is the same if you read it aloud to yourself. Really the difference is that when a publisher releases an audiobook they hire someone (sometimes multiple someones) often an actor or the original author to sit in a recording studio and recite. They pay for things like studio time, sound engineering, editing, the narrators time, sometimes music or foley, etc. It's very much a different product. If you have a book and you recite it, or if you pay someone to come into your home and read it to you, or you get a bunch of software and have your computer read it for you, that's your right and at your own expense in terms of time, money, and effort. Some kind of text to speech software is expected on pretty much every device. Including such features in devices or using those features (especially the accessibility features) of your own devices isn't copyright infringement, shouldn't open you up to demands for payments from publishers, and is in no way comparable to a professionally produced audiobook. Maybe one day the tech will advance to where a program can gather the context needed to speak with and convey the correct emotion for each line and will be capable of delivering a solid performance, but right now we're lucky if more than 2/3 of the words are even pronounced correctly and the inflection isn't bizarre enough to make you question what was being said or distract you from the material.
- rob74 4y ago
  Next you will need audio rights if you want to read a bedtime story to your kids...

narrationbox 4y ago

Your average mobile processor doesn't have anywhere near enough processing power to run a state of the art text to speech network in real-time. Most text to speech on mobile hardware are stream from the cloud.

ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
The parent didn't mention real-time as a requirement. Offline rendering would well suffice.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Dr. Sbaitso ran on a modest 386. Mobile device processors generally eclipse that and could definitely generate better quality TTS.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Not only is state of the art TTS much more demanding (and much much higher quality) than Dr. Sbaitso[0], but so are the not-quite-so-good TTS engines in both Android and iOS. That said, having only skimmed the paper I didn’t notice a discussion of the compute requirements for usage (just training), but it did say it was a 28.7 million parameter model, so I recon this could be used in real-time on a phone. [0] judging by the videos of Dr. Sbaitso on YouTube, it was only one step up from the intro to Impossible Mission on the Commodore 64.
  - rob74 4y ago
    Ok, I get it, state of the art TTS uses AI techniques and so eats processing power, buuuuut seeing that much older efforts which ran on devices like old PCs, the Amiga, the original Macintosh, the Kindle etc. used much less CPU for speech that you could (mostly) understand without problems, it may be worth exploring if it's possible to write a better "dumb" (i.e. non-AI) speech synthesizer?
    - ben_w 4y ago

ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago

Well, that's no surprise, because governments/corporations (in fact, The Govporation these days) strive to keep the status quo of being way beyond the capabilities of the people, hence the monopoly on weapon-grade tools - and I seriously think that AI-produced speech that is indistinguishable from the human one is a weapon-grade tool.

ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
- simonh 4y ago
  “Govporation” is exactly the sort of agenda driven torturous linguistic manipulation that the phrase “call a spade a spade” mocks.
  - ccbccccbbcccbb 4y ago
    Parse it as "seemingly independent governments of the world and international big business blended and interlocked together to the point of being indistinguishable" to ease the torture.
    - simonh 4y ago
      We have a word for that, although it's meaning is a bit broader. Society.
      - guerrilla 4y ago
        No, that excludes labor, i.e. the majority of people. Land, labor, capitol and state as per classical economics (Ricardo, Smith, etc.)
        simonh 4y ago
        We're democracies, we vote. Oh also it's land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship in classical economics.

phh 4y ago

I agree so much, that I've started learning ML to make a decent opensource many-languages TTS working on smartphones. But really, the situation is pretty good, with a lot of code and dataset available as opensource. Notably, if you're not constrained to smartphones and the like, you can run on your computer quite a number of modern models, see for instance https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS/ https://github.com/coqui-ai/TTS/ (which itself contains many different models). The work that needs to be done is """just""" to turn those models into something suitable for smartphones (which will most likely include re-training), and to plug them back into Android's TTS API.

follower 4y ago
If you've not already encountered them I'd definitely encourage you to check out these Free/Open Source projects too: * Larynx: https://github.com/rhasspy/larynx/ https://github.com/rhasspy/larynx/ * OpenTTS: https://github.com/synesthesiam/opentts https://github.com/synesthesiam/opentts * Likely Mimic3 in the near future: https://mycroft.ai/blog/mimic-3-preview/ https://mycroft.ai/blog/mimic-3-preview/ Larynx in particular has a focus on "faster than real-time" while OpenTTS is an attempt to package & provide common REST API to all Free/Open Source Text To Speech systems so the FLOSS ecosystem can build on previous work supported by short-lived business interests, rather than start from scratch every time. AIUI the developer of the first two projects now works for Mycroft AI & is involved in the development of Mimic3 which seems very promising given how much of an impact on quality his solo work has had in just the past couple of years or so.

pomian 4y ago

This reminds me of voice dictation history. I remember using dragon and other upstarts, on a 486dx notebook. I could discuss with the laptop, ask instructions, receive answers, and control verbally all options, actions, and programs. At the same time, do dictation in different fields of study - training required in geology words or engineering words for example - which was remarkably accurate. So you could turn on your notebook; start running programs, verbally type (dictate) a report , save, format, print, it email it - then turn on a music player or watch a movie. All without touching a mouse or keyboard. This was in a busy room, with a party by the way. Everyone said, just wait until computer speeds are faster! But all the software was bought out by Apple, Microsoft. It didn't get improved on for over 20-25 years, and still not really f functioning. (Except siri Google etc.) the

follower 4y ago
In case it's of interest, when I last explored this topic in terms of the Free/Open Source ecosystem I was very impressed with how well VOSK-API performed: https://github.com/alphacep/vosk-api https://github.com/alphacep/vosk-api Here's another project that builds on top of VOSK to provide a tighter integration with Linux: https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation

wintermutestwin 4y ago

Fun fact: If you try to use Siri to read the text of a website to you ("speak screen"), it refuses to do so if you are connected to a car's bluetooth. One of the vast litany of non-AI related Siri flaws that make you wonder how a $2t company can achieve such tragic levels of incompetence.

moron4hire 4y ago
That sounds intentional, like trying to prevent "public performances".
causality0 4y ago
I wonder if Google has the same limitation. I use that functionality quite often but I do it over the aux input.