{"id":748587,"date":"2019-12-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deepmind.com\/blog\/article\/Using-WaveNet-technology-to-reunite-speech-impaired-users-with-their-original-voices"},"modified":"2019-12-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T00:00:00","slug":"using-wavenet-technology-to-reunite-speech-impaired-users-with-their-original-voices-2","status":"publish","type":"station","link":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/plato-data\/using-wavenet-technology-to-reunite-speech-impaired-users-with-their-original-voices-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Using WaveNet technology to reunite speech-impaired users with their original voices"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This post details a recent project we undertook with Google and ALS campaigner Tim Shaw, as part of Google\u2019s Euphonia project. We demonstrate an early proof of concept of how text-to-speech technologies can synthesise a high-quality, natural sounding voice using minimal recorded speech data.  <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

As a teenager, Tim Shaw put everything he had into football practice: his dream was to join the NFL. After playing for Penn State in college, his ambitions were finally realised: the Carolina Panthers drafted him at age 23, and he went on to play for the Chicago Bears and Tennessee Titans, where he broke records as a linebacker. After six years in the NFL, on the cusp of greatness, his performance began to falter. He couldn\u2019t tackle like he once had; his arms slid off the pullup bar. At home, he dropped bags of groceries, and his legs began to buckle underneath him. In 2013 Tim was cut from the Titans but he resolved to make it onto another team. Tim practiced harder than ever, yet his performance continued to decline. Five months later, he finally discovered the reason: he was diagnosed with <\/span>Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis<\/span><\/a> (ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease). In ALS, the neurons that control a person\u2019s voluntary muscles die, eventually leading to a total loss of control over one\u2019s body. ALS has no known cause, and, as of today, has no cure.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Today, Tim is a <\/span>powerful advocate<\/span><\/a> for ALS research. Earlier this year, he published a <\/span>letter to his younger self<\/span><\/a> advising acceptance\u2013\u201cotherwise, you\u2019ll grieve yourself to death.\u201d Now a wheelchair user, he lives under the constant care of his parents. People with ALS have trouble moving, and the disease makes speaking, swallowing, and even breathing on their own difficult and then impossible. Not being able to communicate can be one of the hardest aspects for people with ALS and their families. As Tim put it: \u201cit\u2019s beyond frustrating not to be able to express what\u2019s going on in my mind. I\u2019m smarter than ever but I just can\u2019t get it out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Losing one\u2019s voice can be socially devastating. Today, the main option available to people to preserve their voice is <\/span>message banking,<\/span><\/a> wherein people with ALS can digitally record and store personally meaningful phrases using their natural inflection and intonation. Message banking is a source of great comfort for people with ALS and their families, helping to preserve a core part of their identity – their voice – through a deeply challenging time. But message banking lacks flexibility, resulting in a static dataset of phrases. Imagine being told you will never be able to speak again. Now imagine that you were given the chance to preserve your voice by recording as much of it as possible. How would you decide what to record? How would you capture what you most want to be able to say in the future?  Would it be a meaningful story, a favorite phrase or a simple \u201cI love you\u201d? The process can be time consuming and emotionally draining, especially as someone\u2019s voice degrades. And people who aren\u2019t able to record phrases in time are left to choose a generic computer synthesized voice that lacks the same power of connection as their own.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source: https:\/\/deepmind.com\/blog\/article\/Using-WaveNet-technology-to-reunite-speech-impaired-users-with-their-original-voices<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":748588,"template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","type":"","auto_type":false,"post":"","stream":"","stream_url":"","waveform_data":[],"duration":0,"start":0,"end":0,"bpm":0,"downloadable":false,"download_url":"","purchase_title":"","purchase_url":"","post-count-all":0,"like_count":0,"download_count":0,"editor_note":"","copyright":"","captions":[],"sources":[]},"genre":[10305],"station_tag":[],"artist":[43679],"mood":[],"activity":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/station\/748587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/station"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/station"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=748587"},{"taxonomy":"station_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/station_tag?post=748587"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=748587"},{"taxonomy":"mood","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/mood?post=748587"},{"taxonomy":"activity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/activity?post=748587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}