Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI Guesses Your Accent

start.boldvoice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 274 posts

Re: AI Guesses Your Accent

#231

Post by binary132 »

anadalakra wrote: post #82
binary132 wrote: post #75

I’d be interested in a version of this that guesses regional American accent backgrounds. I’d like to think it would have a hard time with me.

Nice suggestion! BoldVoice focuses on helping non-native English speakers to learn the American accent, so we tailored the accent oracle to non-native accents specifically.

I’m not suggesting you change your product. I’m simply explaining what I personally would be interested in.

That said, if you want to teach people to speak with an “American accent”, you should probably be aware that there is no “American accent”, only regional accents.

Re: AI Guesses Your Accent

#232

Post by anadalakra »

binary132 wrote: post #231
anadalakra wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice suggestion! BoldVoice focuses on helping non-native English speakers to learn the American accent, so we tailored the accent oracle to non-native accents specifically.

I’m not suggesting you change your product. I’m simply explaining what I personally would be interested in. That said, if you want to teach people to speak with an “American accent”, you should probably be aware that there is no “American accent”, only regional accents.

Thanks - we're aware! There's also a concept of a general American accent. Since the app is for non-native English speakers, a general American accent is the goal more so than a regional accent. We built the app together with professional accent coaches -- if you're interested in our methodology, you can learn more on boldvoice.com.

Re: AI Guesses Your Accent

#233

Post by anadalakra »

belval wrote: post #2

It's fun but as I tested it I realized how this is pretty much the modern equivalent of a Facebook quiz that asks you the name of your first pet, first car and mother's maiden name. If they recorded any of that they likely have enough to clone my voice somewhat faithfully. Congratulations on labelling my French Canadian accent as French though, I'll have to work on my pronounciation more to fool the AI.

Hi, founder here! We're a YC-funded education app with over 1 million downloads, currently #7 on the Education chart of the App Store. The goal of the accent oracle tool is to help more non-native English speakers find out about BoldVoice. While it's important as consumers to be aware of data privacy with AI tools in general, I want to set the record straight that that's not the point of what we're doing here. But great to hear that we got your accent right :)

Re: AI Guesses Your Accent

#234

Post by dhosek »

umeshunni wrote: post #182
dhosek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It thought my native language was Hindi/Urdu which was amused me if only because whenever I try to do a foreign accent it eventually morphs into a Hindi accent no matter where it started.

Out of curiosity what is your accent?

Chicago (West-side Czech, to be more specific).

Re: AI Guesses Your Accent

#235

Post by dhosek »

hug wrote: post #141
dhosek wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ex-wife whose native language is Spanish worked hard to eliminate her accent because she got tired of people calling her accent “cute.” Her shibboleths were anything with a schwa. The whole concept of schwas offends her sense of vocalic purity.

So her shibboleths were approximately every word in the English language?

Only some schwas escaped her. “Digital” is the one that I remember best.

Re: AI Guesses Your Accent

#237

Post by sam_lowry_ »

anadalakra wrote: post #233
belval wrote: post #2

It's fun but as I tested it I realized how this is pretty much the modern equivalent of a Facebook quiz that asks you the name of your first pet, first car and mother's maiden name. If they recorded any of that they likely have enough to clone my voice somewhat faithfully. Congratulations on labelling my French Canadian accent as French though, I'll have to work on my pronounciation more to fool the AI.

Hi, founder here! We're a YC-funded education app with over 1 million downloads, currently #7 on the Education chart of the App Store. The goal of the accent oracle tool is to help more non-native English speakers find out about BoldVoice. While it's important as consumers to be aware of data privacy with AI tools in general, I want to set the record straight that that's not the point of what we're doing here. But gr…

I tried the app, and it's great. As a near-native French speaker I would be interested in working out my French pronunciation, hopefully you will go multi-language soon.

Re: AI Guesses Your Accent

#238

Post by sam_lowry_ »

cperciva wrote: post #177
insane_dreamer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French Canadian and France French accents are very different, so if the AI couldn't tell the difference, that doesn't speak well for it

Indeed. I learned Quebecois in school and when I started speaking it in Paris I got confused looks and "... do you speak English?"

One of the tests for native / non-native speakers aside from the famous colored words quiz for spies is how well they understand accents.

While my own French is pretty decent, I can barely understand Quebecois. OTOH, native French speakers get along with Quebecois just fine.

Re: AI Guesses Your Accent

#239

Post by belval »

anadalakra wrote: post #233
belval wrote: post #2

It's fun but as I tested it I realized how this is pretty much the modern equivalent of a Facebook quiz that asks you the name of your first pet, first car and mother's maiden name. If they recorded any of that they likely have enough to clone my voice somewhat faithfully. Congratulations on labelling my French Canadian accent as French though, I'll have to work on my pronounciation more to fool the AI.

Hi, founder here! We're a YC-funded education app with over 1 million downloads, currently #7 on the Education chart of the App Store. The goal of the accent oracle tool is to help more non-native English speakers find out about BoldVoice. While it's important as consumers to be aware of data privacy with AI tools in general, I want to set the record straight that that's not the point of what we're doing here. But gr…

Hey! Just to be clear I really didn't want to imply that you were trying to clone my voice. I think your product is very interesting and this demo is a nice showcase of your tech.

It was meant more as a reflection on how, due to how fast threat models evolve, even the seemingly innocuous act of recording 2 sentences on a random website can now be used to break into my bank account.

Post reply on HN