Film critic Roger Ebert appeared on Oprah today to talk about his battle with cancer that left him unable to speak and eat or drink by mouth. He also demonstrated his new computer-generated voice that a software company designed using previous TV and DVD recordings of his voice. It doesn’t have the texture and intonation of a natural human voice, but it sounds enough like him to bring tears to his wife’s eyes.
Let’s hope the developers can eventually make this an iPhone app so that he doesn’t have to pull out a computer every time he wants to speak. And I have no doubt that, in another five years, this artificial voice will be almost indistinguishable from his natural voice. Speech synthesis technology has been around a long time, but it looks like it’s finally reached a point where it can truly replace a voice lost to illness or injury.
