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Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

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61–70 of 122 posts

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#61

It's very good. The voices reminds me of speech from real life people with accents. It's good enough for voice overs where previously real-life voices would be too expensive. I would say that it's better than Amazon's Polly when it's used to read long passages of text.

I don't know. They're good but they still sound robotic. For me, they work for applications where I sort of expect/accept that I'll get computer-generated speech anyway. But I wouldn't use them as a general substitute for a human speaking, even someone like me who doesn't exactly have a radio voice.

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#62
post #59

Is there any API for generating speech that sounds like Google Now's assistant? The quality of that is much, much better than this new service.

Yes, I use this: https://github.com/pndurette/gTTS Very simple and has the Google Assistant voice.

Hmm, that seems much worse than Google Assistant as well. I think my mistake was that I had selected "Basic" instead of "WaveNet" for the voices (because it's only available for US English). WaveNet is much better.

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#63
Here's a simple Python script that will fetch some sample audio using the request on the demo page and save it in a file:

https://www.pastery.net/nujfhw/

I have no idea what the rate limits are, so please don't abuse it, I wrote it because the demo didn't work in Firefox and I wanted to play around with it more extensively.

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#64

For any Google devs lurking out there, it doesn't seem to work at all in Firefox on Windows. It looks like it has something to do with custom web components with the following message: ReferenceError: customElements is not defined Also apparently some assertion errors with webcomponents (minified so line numbers not useful).

That's probably because custom elements aren't supported in Firefox yet, unless you set "dom.webcomponents.enabled" and "dom.webcomponents.customelements.enable" to true. It's supposed to be fully enabled in Firefox 60/61 according to MDN [0]. [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components/...

Sure, but should they not be either using polyfills, or not use code that is only supported by one browser? I understand how a project like Allo Web would want to use latest streaming api tech, but a documentation/product launch page doesn't need crazy new web tech.

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#65

Google also announced today their Tacotron engine which features new prosody modeling speech generation. It allows them to generate speech that mimics personal intonation, accents, and rhythm, effectively mimicking an individuals "expression" in their speech. HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691197

They also announced their new fluerosinth-ai amplitudinal speech to text deep-cloudmind product, although I can't find a reference link...

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#66
post #36

Google also announced today their Tacotron engine which features new prosody modeling speech generation. It allows them to generate speech that mimics personal intonation, accents, and rhythm, effectively mimicking an individuals "expression" in their speech. HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16691197

I find it amusing that here we have all the corporatey buzzwords - "DeepMind WaveNet Technology" - but the other thing is called Tacotron.

if they named themselves DeepMind WaveNet Blockchain, they could have acquired Googlebet* by now.

* that's how i call google/alphabet when it doesn't matter which side of the tax-avoiding entity i am referring to.

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#67

For any Google devs lurking out there, it doesn't seem to work at all in Firefox on Windows. It looks like it has something to do with custom web components with the following message: ReferenceError: customElements is not defined Also apparently some assertion errors with webcomponents (minified so line numbers not useful).

> something from google not working on firefox.

Call me paranoid all you want, but that is their plan. just like it was microsoft's plan for nothing on IE4/6 to work on netscape. Heck, a third of my corporate sites have DHTML popups saying "Use chrome" when i reach them with firefox already.

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#68
post #35

Is it just me, or would a demo really make this posting much more interesting? Edit: There is one, on the actual Google Cloud Text-To-Speech page, so a few clicks in and you'll get one.

Doesn't show up on Firefox or Edge. Only a blank space where I assume the demo should be. Console suggests some sort of Polymer/WebComponents error.

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#69
post #42

Having an English text but setting the language to another one like German or French is hilarious. You get e.g. ze Dscherman aczent or de frensch onehe.

Also feeding it text from the Anguish Languish[1] corpus is pretty good.

[1] https://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/anguish.html

Re: Google Cloud Text-To-Speech Powered by DeepMind WaveNet Technology

#70

I wish they had some beautiful voices, not some of the most generic-sounding men and women.

They're working on it! Check out the samples here:

https://research.googleblog.com/2018/03/expressive-speech-sy...

The last set is specifically interesting for your wish.

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