This seems super interesting! They say that they are using a novel approach that models the actual way humans create sounds. Is this completely new? I would assume this implies that you can reuse so much more among languages, and have a more flexible system - like getting it to shout or sing, making strange noises, whistling, etc. But I don't know a lot about it. Is what I'm saying Science Fiction?
This is the kind of article in which i'd love (and I have almost come to expect!) to find comments that provide so much more breadth and depth of information that the actual link, here on HN; this is one of the things that make this community so great.
The idea is actually quite old (as they half-way admit, this is based on a program that was developed on NeXT machines when those were current; the research goes back to the late 60s and 70s). Wikipedia has some background naturally:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis#Articulatory_...
There is also research into using this type of physical modeling for singing[1] and laughing[2], so its not far-fetched to imagine a model that can speak, sing, laugh, shout, and perform any of the various vocal articulations humans can make. The main obstacles seem to be figuring out how to control the model over time, how to smoothly transition between control states, and how to capture enough fine details to cross the uncanny valley.
> The idea is actually quite old (as they half-way admit, this is based on a program that was developed on NeXT machines when those were current; the research goes back to the late 60s and 70s).
I don't think linking the papers that form the basis of the work, and describing the history in fair detail (including the original development for the NeXT, and the technical change from real-time DSP-based synthesis to realtime CPU based synthesis enabled by CPU speed improvements since the NeXT was current) constitutes "half-way admitting" that the idea has been around for a while. Its pretty outright explicit.
This is the kind of article in which i'd love (and I have almost come to expect!) to find comments that provide so much more breadth and depth of information that the actual link, here on HN; this is one of the things that make this community so great.