Patent Document ID: 8930183
Application ID: 13217628
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of converting speech from the characteristics of a first voice to the characteristics of a second voice, the method comprising: receiving a speech input from a first voice, dividing said speech input into a plurality of frames; in a processor, mapping the speech from the first voice to a second voice using a Gaussian process; and outputting the speech in the second voice, wherein mapping the speech from the first voice to the second voice comprises, deriving kernels demonstrating the similarity between speech features derived from the frames of the speech input from the first voice and stored frames of training data for said first voice, the training data corresponding to different text to that of the speech input and wherein the mapping step uses a plurality of kernels derived for each frame of input speech with a plurality of stored frames of training data of the first voice and using said plurality of kernels to define a non-parametric Gaussian process prior for said mapping.