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Deep Learning for Siri’s Voice

machinelearning.apple.com

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Re: Deep Learning for Siri’s Voice

#81

Post by hrrsn »

saagarjha wrote: post #74
MBCook wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that the OS X TTS engine is the same as Siri's as it would be available in High Sierra. Is the one in Sierra different from Siri in iOS 10?

> I would assume that the OS X TTS engine is the same as Siri's as it would be available in High Sierra. Nope, macOS uses a different set of voices for TTS, which are named differently as well. They work offline and are nowhere as good as Siri.

I haven't needed to use Siri on my Mac, but presumably that's using the same stuff as iOS?

Re: Deep Learning for Siri’s Voice

#83

Post by gok »

blackkettle wrote: post #58
edwhitesell wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably safe to assume a lot of that was due to some/most of Siri being licensed from Nuance initially. I mean, who wants to talk about a new product, which most people think is brand new and entirely innovative, just to say "Oh yeah, we paid someone else to work with us to create it." Not that there's anything wrong with that and it certainly seems like Apple has been investing in-house pretty heavily in recen…

I think it has more to do with the fact that they are finally starting to allow their researchers to publish. They were platinum sponsors at INTERSPEECH 2017 this week, and actually published a paper there. I'm pretty sure that was the first time _ever_ despite their recruiters showing up every year.

3 papers at Interspeech 2017, actually :)

Re: Deep Learning for Siri’s Voice

#84

Post by digi_owl »

default-kramer wrote: post #53

This just made me realize that every time you see a strong AI in fiction, it still has a computer-sounding voice. If we ever develop strong AI, we will probably already have perfectly natural speech synthesis. And if not, the AI could develop it for us. But I suppose an AI might choose to use a computer-sounding voice to remind us that it is a computer. Kind of like those inaccurate sound effects in movies - they hav…

Anyone else find themselves thinking about Data, and why he was portrayed the way he was?

Re: Deep Learning for Siri’s Voice

#85

Post by digi_owl »

MBCook wrote: post #69
banderman wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recommend watching the scifi film "Her", it has a different take on this.

That was a great movie. There is always the chance that as we get better at this stuff we'll start to find it creepy that it's so realistic (either due to the uncanny valley or because we crossed the valley) and we'll start to prefer devices that act robotic even though we know we could make the indistinguishable. I'm trying to think of another example. I know I've heard a good one with Roombas but I can't remember i…

Well there is always Data, and how he was made to be less human after the researchers found Lore to be unsettling.

Re: Deep Learning for Siri’s Voice

#86

Post by MBCook »

digi_owl wrote: post #85
MBCook wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a great movie. There is always the chance that as we get better at this stuff we'll start to find it creepy that it's so realistic (either due to the uncanny valley or because we crossed the valley) and we'll start to prefer devices that act robotic even though we know we could make the indistinguishable. I'm trying to think of another example. I know I've heard a good one with Roombas but I can't remember i…

Well there is always Data, and how he was made to be less human after the researchers found Lore to be unsettling.

Excellent example. I'd forgotten about Lore.

Re: Deep Learning for Siri’s Voice

#87

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

jchw wrote: post #4

My favorite part is that the runtime runs on device. I moved back to Android, but persistently one thing Apple does that I like is they don't move things to the internet as often as Google does. On Android, you get degraded TTS if the internet is shoddy.

On iOS, by contrast, TTS quality depends on available disk space. If there's too little of it, iOS removes Siri's higher-quality voice files.

Re: Deep Learning for Siri’s Voice

#90

Post by Eridrus »

jchw wrote: post #4

My favorite part is that the runtime runs on device. I moved back to Android, but persistently one thing Apple does that I like is they don't move things to the internet as often as Google does. On Android, you get degraded TTS if the internet is shoddy.

Fundamentally, offline TTS/ASR/NLP is going to be degraded because you can't fit cloud-sized models onto a mobile device.

Could offline models be better? Definitely. But they only way to make them as good as cloud models it to make the cloud models worse.

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