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Subject: Google’s DeepMind division has claimed a big leap forward in producing computer-generated speech, potentially bringing forward the day when machines sound as natural as humans
Excerpt: English text from the archived bilingual edition · Chinese edition
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Google’s DeepMind division has claimed a big leap forward in producing computer-generated speech, potentially bringing forward the day when machines sound as natural as humans
Researchers at the UK-based artificial intelligence arm said tests of their system with human listeners, though unavoidably subjective, had shown that the technology halves the quality gap that exists between today’s computer systems and human speech
One person familiar with the research said the system, called WaveNet, was not being employed in any of Google’s products yet, and that the massive computing power it needed to generate speech made it impractical for real world use for the foreseeable future
The research that led to WaveNet, along with a number of samples of speech generated by the system, was published online on Thursday
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