VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Bruce

Audiobook narrator Cat Gould posted a written segment of I'm guessing a romance novel to show how difficult it is for Text to Speech or AI programs to take over our livelihood. To prove her point I went to the top five sites I could find, that worked, and entered a small bit of the text:

Bruce · Posted: Fri May 11, 2018 9:25 am Post subject:

If I were blind the next to last one might do, but it still ain't human!

B
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I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

Lee Gordon · Posted: Fri May 11, 2018 10:17 am Post subject:

Any one of these would be perfectly acceptable to give me driving directions through my GPS device, but not for anything that calls for an actual narrator.
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Bruce · Posted: Fri May 11, 2018 11:19 am Post subject:

You know what really pisses me off today? I'm doing big European history textbooks right now, and a minor piss off is the publisher doesn't give me pronunciations on many of the more uncommon names - - but I'm not too sad because my clock is running while I do a thorough job of finding pronunciations - -

But the big pisser is all these alleged pronunciation videos on YouTube voiced by F'ing MACHINES! When dictionaries and other pronunciation sites don't offer these names spoken, then I have to go to secondary type sources. They aren't even close to realistic or accurate! And they're making money in some cases while I wait for their crap answer. Once we get the Russians subversive and propaganda sites closed down, I propose we take on these idiots next.

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

Dan-O · The Gates of Troy Joined: 17 Jan 2005 Posts: 1638

Did you see this?

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/8/17332070/google-assistant-makes-phone-call-demo-duplex-io-2018

todd ellis · Posted: Fri May 11, 2018 12:16 pm Post subject:

i don't like that ... no sir, not one bit.
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Bruce · Posted: Fri May 11, 2018 1:51 pm Post subject:

I see this being full of errors and confusion for some time to come. They only played the calls that worked (sort of). But at least if something goes wrong with the A.I. here you don't run down pedestrians in Arizona, you just tick off a server at a Chinese restaurant.

And this is probably not the time or place to discuss it, but I continue to be concerned about all the jobs that are being taken over by A.I. I've seen the discussion, and even the TV Ads for schools, that we'll just teach Internet Technology to the displaced! Simple! Sure, I.T. is growing, but I don't think fast enough to soak up the coming unemployed.

And how lazy are we going to be? Disney's movie WALL-E was a cute little tale, but about a terribly dystopian future on a bespoiled Earth, and its vision of us humans all being fat blobs floating around in low gravity space ships with nothing to do but find entertainment for ourselves, really chilling. Is that all there is for us? Now that's #Sad.

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

todd ellis · Posted: Fri May 11, 2018 5:29 pm Post subject:

my concern is not for employment, but for the future of humanity.
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"i know philip banks": todd ellis
who's/on/1st?

Bish · Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 4:39 am Post subject:

Many years ago I heard a great example of how the correct emphasis can only be achieved by understanding the written text in context with a human situational awareness.

Scene: A young couple enjoying the first fumblings of a physical relationship.

"What's this thing called love?"
(as in a question regarding the eternal verities of the human condition)

"What's this thing called, love?
(as in a naive question about a partners physical attributes)

Can machine reading interpret the comma perfectly? A human narrator will have an insight into the characters and context and will make the correct call... even if the author has played a little fast-and-loose with punctuation (which is unfortunately the way of things nowadays as demonstrated by the copy we've all seen from so-called professional writers).
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
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Mike Harrison · Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 8:25 am Post subject:

Beyond the fact that current TTS technology sounds like doo-doo, I feel the real danger lies - in our case - with clients who are of the mindset, "That's good enough."

Those who either can't tell the difference or simply don't care will make too many things of questionable quality acceptable.

Take some television programming, for example.
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Mike
Male Voice Over Talent
I have taken leave of my sensors.

Bish · Posted: Sun May 13, 2018 9:21 am Post subject:

Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

The duplex example is very interesting. So, like, um they can do young high pitched one-dimensional hipster up-talking voices. That's not too hard.

Can they do a real rich voice? That's a long way off. Still, impressive.

One of the reasons why i ditched Audition for REAPER is that Adobe is hell-bent on driving AI voice technology. With CC 2018 I uploaded a 30 minute E-Learning script and it produced a "good enough" computer narration in ten minutes! And it was much better than any of the examples in the original post. Thank you for posting that though, Bruce!
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Dayo · Cinquecento Joined: 10 Jan 2008 Posts: 544 Location: UK

Fear not. People will always crave authenticity. Witness the rise of craft breweries, artisan bakers etc. Ain’t a robot been invented yet that can raise a eyebrow, add a sly smile, or put a metaphorical arm round your shoulder...
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Colin Day - UK Voiceover
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Philip Banks · Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 9:55 am Post subject:

and the Beret from France is still with us!

Tim Jackson · Joined: 21 Nov 2017 Posts: 23 Location: Salt Lake City, UT

I find the discussion of how destructive technology is and how we will become a dystopia through a lazy spiral amusing. Think of all the things you use today that were some new destructive technology some time in the past.

People who were employed in the manufacture, maintenance and husbandry in the horse and buggy industry were appalled by the coming of the horseless carriage. Some adapted and became vendors in that new world. Some had to find a new way to make a living. Eventually, all of the people in the horse and buggy industry ended up doing something different than what they were doing. Custom coachworks still exist, but only at a very high cost.

In terms of quality, we have already accepted that price and convenience, in a huge majority of cases, takes precedence over quality. We stream music and video at a lower quality than we could get before. We accept that things are built to be thrown away instead of repaired.

When it comes to voice over, we will be replaced by machines for some jobs. Where there is no need for the quality and subtleties that a human can provide, automation will take over. The Duplex demo shows that it isn't as far away as many think. I would say that there are artificial voices today that are good enough for IVR, good enough for overhead announcements, good enough to answer the phone at that same Chinese restaurant and take a reservation booking, etc. (And it is kinda amusing to think of my Google assistant calling your Google assistant to arrange stuff.)

We can get all ruffled and use our pen knives to sharpen up our goose quills to fire off a disgruntled missive or we can just keep on doing what we do and adapting with the times.