It has that kind of nasal twang. You would never be confused about whether that s a human or a computer. In fact, you could say, okay, if it s an error message I want this voice, if it s a nice thing I want this other voice. And so we ll basically be able to mimic the sound of different speakers, and make it sound very reasonable. Of course, on the other side it s more of a challenge.
Voice synthesis is easier than voice recognition.
In voice recognition there is incredible progress. Certainly in limited domains where you understand the vocabulary and the kind of sentences that might make sense, you can get very high recognition rates. It s nowhere near good enough today that you d say if you re able to use the keyboard that you d prefer to use voice input. That s kind of been the Holy Grail. Well, like so many things that have to do with human abilities, the more we learn about it, the more respect we gain for how complex the way that the brain processes information is.