DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Partner Zones AWS Cloud
by AWS Developer Relations
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Partner Zones
AWS Cloud
by AWS Developer Relations
11 Monitoring and Observability Tools for 2023
Learn more

Alexa's Neural Text-to-Speech Will Soon Be Able to Read You the News

Listen to samples of Alexa speaking in the unmistakable ''newscaster voice'' style.

Kara Phelps user avatar by
Kara Phelps
·
Nov. 20, 18 · News
Like (1)
Save
Tweet
Share
4.91K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

Amazon is introducing a new speaking style option for its voice assistant Alexa, the Verge reported today. This style places emphasis on phrases and words in a manner similar to the easily recognizable "newscaster voice" used by journalists on broadcast television and radio to report the news.

To train Alexa, Amazon developed and refined a new text-to-speech technology that incorporates a generative neural network. This technology is called "neural text-to-speech" (NTTS). It's designed to produce more expressive, human-like sounds faster than older systems that divide speech into singular bits called phonemes — a process known as concatenative speech synthesis.

Trevor Wood and Tom Merritt of the Alexa Speech group shared yesterday that it only took a few hours' worth of training materials to teach Alexa how to speak like a newscaster using Amazon's new approach to NTTS. Listen below to the NTTS newscaster voice and compare it with the other, earlier versions.

Female Voice

Male Voice

Concatenative Concatenative
Standard neutral NTTS Standard neutral NTTS
NTTS newscaster

NTTS newscaster

From Amazon Alexa's developer blog

While the NTTS newscaster voice is still noticeably non-human, it does sound more natural. Amazon noted that most people prefer listening to the NTTS newscaster over the other TTS styles (although a human newscaster was the crowd favorite).

How does it work? "Our neural TTS system comprises two components: (1) a neural network that converts a sequence of phonemes — the most basic units of language — into a sequence of 'spectrograms,' or snapshots of the energy levels in different frequency bands; and (2) a vocoder, which converts the spectrograms into a continuous audio signal," Wood and Merritt explain.

Twitter reacted to the news with a grab bag of mixed feelings and wit. A radio announcer joked that it might be "time to call it" for his profession:

Image title

Jamie Bologna's tweet

Others made Anchorman references:

Image title

Tim Insko's tweet

This new development comes two months after Amazon first announced a new "whisper mode" for Alexa, allowing Alexa devices to respond to whispered commands by whispering. No word on a Ron Burgundy voice yet, though.

News

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • Key Elements of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
  • OWASP Kubernetes Top 10
  • 5 Software Developer Competencies: How To Recognize a Good Programmer
  • Testing Repository Adapters With Hexagonal Architecture

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: