[img]http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/12/jack-voice-30-rock.jpg
[/img]Don't ever knock Google for not reinvesting a little of that
cheddar it's stacking in Mountain View. Barely two months after
pulling the trigger on BlindType, El Goog has now sunk an undisclosed
amount of money into Phonetic Arts, described as a speech synthesis
company based in Cambridge, England. Naturally, Google's been toiling
around the clock in an effort to better its speech technologies, and
it looks as if it could be cutting out quite a few months (or years)
of work with this one purchase. Phonetic Arts was known for being on
the "cutting edge of speech synthesis, delivering technology that
generates natural computer speech from small samples of recorded
voice," and we get the impression that the team will be given
clearance badges to enter Google's London-based engineering facility
shortly. The company's own Mike Cohen is hoping that this will help us
"move a little faster towards that Star Trek future" -- frankly, we're
hoping to have Jack Donaghy's voice become the de facto standard in
under a year. We hear some dudes at 30 Rock are already toying with a
prototype...
No comments:
Post a Comment