Sadly, these kind of features often get less attention than they should, as none of us know what tomorrow brings. It's nice to read how tech can assist people in a far more personal way. “Along with accessibility being one of our core corporate values, so is privacy, and we don’t believe that one should have to give up one to get another,” says Herrlinger. Were that server to be hacked, it creates the risk of someone getting hold of your voice file, and being able to make phone calls that sound just like you.Īpple accessibility lead Sarah Herrlinger says that the company was very mindful of this kind of risk, which is why all the processing happens locally on your own device, using the Neural Engine. One concern about conventional voice-banking is that it’s carried out on a server. This speech accessibility feature uses on-device machine learning to keep users’ information private and secure, and integrates seamlessly with Live Speech so users can speak with their Personal Voice when connecting with loved ones. Users can create a Personal Voice by reading along with a randomized set of text prompts to record 15 minutes of audio on iPhone or iPad. What Apple has achieved with Personal Voice is using a powerful AI system to carry out the voice-banking process in just 15 minutes. In fact, by the time she was actually formally diagnosed with ALS, her voice was already mostly gone. Her voice was one of the first things she lost. My mom passed away in December after a short seven-month battle with ALS. In some cases, you can lose the use of your voice even before you know the reason. “But that I’m the same person that I was prior to my diagnosis.” “I want my family to hear my synthetic voice and not think that I’m a robot,” explains Green. When it’s possible for people to use a voice that sounds like themselves, it can be a deeply meaningful part of the experience. Do it as soon as you find out, because it’s essentially an insurance policy that you hope you won’t have to use.”
But what we are trying to do is make people aware. Team Gleason was founded by former New Orleans Saints player Steve Gleason, following his ALS diagnosis in 2011. “To be honest, you have a lot more things on your mind than, ‘Oh, I should invest time in preserving a version of my voice that I may need in two years or six months or four years,’” says Green, a member of the board of directors at Team Gleason, a nonprofit that serves those with ALS. So, he understands why others might avoid confronting it. Philip Green, a director of an ALS-focused nonprofit, told FastCo that voice-banking took him several weeks.įour years ago, when Philip Green banked his voice, he had to record 1,500 phrases for training purposes, an arduous task that took him weeks to complete. It typically requires you to speak around 1,500 phrases, and can be expensive as well as time-consuming. Voice-banking currently takes weeksĬonventional voice-banking is a laborious process. Your voice is recorded while you speak a bunch of phrases, and a computer system creates a voice that sounds just like yours, by learning the timbre, accent, intonation, and timing of your speech. This is possible using technology known as voice-banking. The next major development was much more natural-sounding speech, like that used by Siri.īut the best option of all for those who can no longer speak clearly, or at all, is a voice that sounds just like you. He could select words and phrases that would be spoken aloud, but in a very robotic voice. We’re all familiar with the speech synthesiser used by the late Stephen Hawking.
By the time people realize they need a synthesized voice that sounds like them, it may be too late … From Stephen Hawking’s robotic voice to voice-banking That’s because loss of speech ability can occur very suddenly through medical conditions like ALS ( amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). But a new report today suggests that we should all take advantage of it when iOS 17 launches. While Personal Voice was one of the most exciting of the upcoming accessibility features Apple announced this week, you may have thought it wasn’t relevant to most people.
0 kommentar(er)
