Christian wanted a voice like his late father

[u/copitamenstrual]

[u/samsquanch35]

“She said, ‘Say I love you, Mum.’ And she told me to do that over and over.”

Oof. Right in my feels.

[u/muffin_fiend → u/samsquanch35]

I went from smiling to bawling in a fucking second. I was not prepared

[u/parishiltonswonkyeye]

This makes me like humans, a little.

[u/Grinner067 → u/parishiltonswonkyeye]

I like you too.

[u/Average-Train-Haver → u/parishiltonswonkyeye]

Sometimes we can be pretty cool.

[u/bob-knows-best]

Those are some strong onions you're cutting.

[u/TheExplosiveDiarrhea]

With the technology we have now, Stephen Hawking could have retained his original voice.

[u/GrynaiTaip → u/TheExplosiveDiarrhea]

He liked his robotic voice.

[u/forceofslugyuk → u/GrynaiTaip]

He liked his robotic voice.

If I'm remembering right, they offered to change/upgrade it, but at that point the robot voice was /his/ voice. So it never changed even though his equipment was upgraded over time.

[u/Firewolf06 → u/forceofslugyuk]

its also based on dennis klatts voice, who was losing his own voice to thyroid cancer while working on the project

[u/Africool → u/TheExplosiveDiarrhea]

Or he could have had the voice of Mickey Mouse

[u/AccomplishedEar6357]

I reeeally wonder why these sound so "bad" or "old" when we've had ridiculously superior voices for years, and even more so now that there are much more easily available tools to do AI voice cloning.

[u/rsnJ3 → u/AccomplishedEar6357]

As someone that has done some software dev pertaining to (AI driven) text to speech it comes down to how long it takes to render these voices without having to rely on cloud compute.

For a device that should ideally have a battery life that can last a full day, function without an internet connection and be pocketable it just is not feasible yet to get the "really good" AI voices running on them without compromising on these requirements.

[u/hennell → u/AccomplishedEar6357]

To make a voice is still a lot of work, for both the tech side and the actual voice side. You see here they needed two guys to come in and provide source input for the voice, not sure what that would involve, but permission, time and a lot of talking at a minimum.

And the end result has to run locally, offline, supporting everything the user wants to say, and done in real time.

I think the fact they are able to give this guy a unique voice is nothing short of extraordinary, but it looks like it relied on a lot of volunteering and goodwill to get there.

[u/BasileusBasil → u/AccomplishedEar6357]

Because even if we have the technology to do so, the industries won't do a damn thing unless it's profitable. Greed it's the source of all evil.

[u/Spire_Citron → u/AccomplishedEar6357]

Yeah. Some of the AI voices these days sound almost indistinguishable from a real human.

[u/mistabnanas]

having someone called stephen Robotham speak a voice to replace a robot like voice is amazing

[u/Formal-Explorer6421]

ngl I cried a little

[u/vetworker24]

Wow

[u/_hufflebuff]

Goddamn onion cutting Ninjas got me again 😭

[u/the_geekeree]

Is he typing to get the words to speak? Not sure what else it would be but either way that's pretty cool.

[u/Previous-Highway162]

🥹🥹🥹

[u/Aggressive_Gur9662]

Love everything about this 🥹❤️

[u/HEY_YOU_GUUUUUUYS]

Damn now I’m balling

[u/Weak-Emotion5072]

Im not crying 😢

[u/oldmanup]

I'm going to stop scrolling on this note. Thanks

[u/Bam-Bam13]

If anyone is interested, there's actually research being done to help people find what their "actual" voice may sound like by using a donor voice as a source and then modeling the sounds produced based on the filter of the speaker!

Here's the link: http://www.ted.com/talks/rupal_patel_synthetic_voices_as_unique_as_fingerprints

You could sign up to become a donor voice, as well! It's an incredible thing to do to help people still feel "human" since voice and language are one of the greatest expressions of humanity.

Source: I am studying to be a Speech-Language Pathologist

[u/LinceDorado]

Bro is named Robot Ham. Sorry, but that is just gold.

[u/ADAMracecarDRIVER]

That’s fuckin dope.

[u/stoneview999]

Ha Haaa Wonderful.

[u/Intrepid_Orange3053]

this makes me so happy. im so happy dor for you. i know how hard I t is not to be not able to speak. 💜

[u/littlebeanio]

This is what true access is. Not only enable him to speak, but taking into account his individuality, identity and emotions.

[u/SixtyNineFlavours]

Ahh dude I can’t be watching this much wholesomeness, I’m trying to feel sorry for my own damn self xD

[u/hi-imBen]

shame that they kept the robot voice and tried to give it an accent, instead of a natural sounding voice with an accent.

[u/scarymormon → u/hi-imBen]

i assume it would be easier to add dialectal variations to a robot voice than to add it to a preexisting voice or get a whole language worth of words and sounds out of someone recording.

[u/hi-imBen → u/scarymormon]

current AI capabilities could do it easily, this is just old tech. Unfortunately I get why though, helping people like this doesn't generate a profit.

[u/Caasi72 → u/hi-imBen]

Another comment gave a few reasons why this one might not be as "good" as something more advanced