Google Assistant will now be able to speak with the voice of celebrities, and the first of them will be American singer, songwriter and actor John Legend. For a limited time, the Grammy winner will sing "Happy Birthday" to users, tell users the weather, and answer questions like "Who is Chrissy Teigen?" and so on.
John Legend is one of six new Google Assistant voices that were previewed at Google I/O 2018, where the company unveiled a preview of its WaveNet speech synthesis model. The latter is based on Google DeepMind artificial intelligence, works by sampling human speech and directly modeling audio signals, creating more realistic artificial speech. βWaveNet has allowed us to cut down on recording time in the studioβit can really capture the richness of an actor's voice,β Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said on stage.
Google has several recordings of Mr. Legend's direct responses to a number of pre-selected queries, such as: βHey Google, serenade meβ or βHey Google, are we normal people?β There are also a couple of Easter eggs that prompt responses in the celebrity's voice, but otherwise the standard English system responds in a standard voice.
To activate John Legend's voice, users can say, "Hey Google, speak like Legend," or go to Google Assistant settings and switch to his voice. The feature is only available in English in the US, but this is likely just the beginning - the company will continue to experiment in this direction in the future.
Source: 3dnews.ru