V.u.x. World

Every voice assistant needs three core components: Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Text-to-Speech (TTS). We've already covered what Automatic Speech Recognition is and how it works with Catherine Breslin and in this episode, we're covering the latter, text-to-speech.To guide us through the ins and outs of TTS, we're joined by Niclas Bergström, a TTS veteran and co-founder of one of the largest TTS companies on the planet, Readspeaker.Text-to-speech is the technology that gives voice assistants a voice. It's the thing that produces the synthetic vocal sound that's played from your smart speaker or phone whenever Alexa or Siri speaks. It's the only part of a voice assistant that you'd recognise. The other core components, ASR and NLU, are silent.And, given how we're hard wired for speech - a baby can recognise its mother's voice from the womb - how your voice assistant or voice user interface (VUI) sounds is one of the most important parts of it.A voice com