Tacotron 2: Generating Human-Like Speech from Text
One of the domains where realistic and fully customizable speech synthesis could usher in a renassaince of innovation, would be video games developement.<p>I’ve always been curious about how so seemingly little work has gone into speech generation, compared to graphics and physics and other technologies.<p>Problems with voice actors:<p>• The costs, often unaffordable by solo developers and small teams.<p>• All the text and the scripts have to be finalized and set in stone. You can’t change much, if at all, after you’ve finished recorded everything. Being able to re-hire the same actors for future sequels is also not guaranteed.<p>• Complete lack of real-time customization. For example, in MMORPGs and other online games. So we’re stuck with a few set phrases or using our own voice (not desirable all the time for everyone). Imagine if you could fully customize your voice as well as you can do with your character’s appearance, and have it realistically speak any text you type, or NPCs actually speaking your name instead of using generic placeholders.<p>• Players expect voice acting in all “major” titles. Plenty of games with great stories get skipped over if they don’t have voice acting.