 |
Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
|
 |
Terminator Tongues - USAF Seeks Voice Transformation Tech
Voice transformation is one part of the Terminator's arsenal that the U.S. Air Force would like to have available. Researchers are being solicited to help ordinary human airmen disguise their voices - even to sound like another person altogether. This could be accomplished with voice transformation algorithms that can also detect transformed voices.
As you may recall, in Terminator 2, the bad-guy shape-shifting T1000 takes over the person of John Connor's foster mother. When John becomes suspicious during a phone conversation with her (it), the good-guy Terminator (Arnold, of course) takes over the conversation, imitating John's spoiled west coast brat voice perfectly.

(The Terminator Voice Transformation)
Here are the requirements, from the official U.S.A.F. solicitation:
The goal of this phase is to research techniques to analyze a person [sic] voice for voice transformation. While voice transformation have [sic] been around for awhile, the ability [sic] to transform a person’s voice to a target voice is not yet solved. Parameters such as the speaking rate, stress, and intonation will provide broad parameters for modeling a person’s voice. A finer grain analysis of a person’s voice may also be performed by de-convolving an audio signal into its glottal pulse and vocal tract information.
Transforming a speaker's voice so it is unrecognizable may be less difficult than you might think. Studies were conducted in 1980 in which subjects were tested on their ability to recognize a group of 53 voices, 29 of which were actually familiar to the listener. In the study, 31% of speakers could be identified with a single word, 66% from a single sentence, but only 83% from a full thirty seconds of speech. So, for some of the time (or for some speakers), voices are just hard to recognize consistently.
Transforming a speaker's voice into a target voice is much more difficult. Some of the difficulties relate to
- Formant spectra: the coarse structure of the different parts of speech. 'Formant' refers to the regions of concentration of energy, prominent on a sound spectrogram, that collectively constitute the frequency spectrum of a speech sound. This is the most common target of voice transformation algorithms, which work by constructing a map between the formant spectra of the two voices
- Prosodic features: These are aspects of speech that vary from person to person, like fundamental pitch of the voice, timing - the patterns and rhythms of speech.
- Mannerisms: This refers to word choices and preferred phrases and other high-level behaviors. For example, some one from New Jersey might imitate the voice of someone from Arkansas perfectly, but still fail to convince a listener owing to a failure to select the right phrases.
Incredibly, the U.S.A.F. is even looking further ahead for different uses for voice transformation technology, including "medical applications if a person’s voice box was damaged, in the gaming industry and animated films for creating and modify voices, for voice dubbing of foreign films, and for creating/reducing a person’s accent."
You might enjoy these speech-related articles:
Read more at the USAF voice transformation and detection solicitation and at DefenseTech; see also this interesting short article on voice transformation.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/13/2006)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.
| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories -
("
Engineering
")
China's Drone Mothership Can Carry 100 Drones
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
Drones Recharge In Mid-Air Like Jets Refuel!
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.' - Neal Stephenson, 1995.
Heat Waver - The First Ever Combo Solar Collector And Wind Turbine
'...like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.' - Simpson Stokes, 1937.
Tesla 'Fleet Response Agents' Bolster FSD Autonomy
'You hate the whole idea that some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre has got your life... in his hands.' - Charles Stross, 2007.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
|
 |
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
LLM 'Cognitive Core' Now Evolving
'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
Has Elon Musk Given Up On Mars?
'There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.'
Bacteria Turns Plastic Into Pain Relief? That Gives Me An Idea.
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
When Your Child's Best Friend Is An AI
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
China's Drone Mothership Can Carry 100 Drones
'So the parent drone carries a spotter that it launches...'
Drones Recharge In Mid-Air Like Jets Refuel!
'...nurse drones that would cruise around dumping large amounts of power into randomly selected pods.'
Australian Authors Reject AI Training Of Llama
'It's done with a flip of the third joint of the tentacle on the down beat.'
Is China Mining Helium-3 On The Moon's Farside?
'...for months Grantline bores had dug into the cliff.'
Maybe It's Too Soon To Require Autonomous Mode
'I hope all those other cars are on automatic,' he said anxiously.
Is Agentic AI The Wrong Kind Of Smartness?
'It’s smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to help us find out what’s wrong.'
Heat Waver - The First Ever Combo Solar Collector And Wind Turbine
'...like a spray of tulips mounted fanwise.'
Tesla 'Fleet Response Agents' Bolster FSD Autonomy
'You hate the whole idea that some bored drone pusher in a remote driving centre has got your life... in his hands.'
Mori3 Autonomous Shapeshifting Robot
'My homeland is being threatened by the Replicators. Thus far all attempts to stop them have failed.'
Tesla Seeks 'Tesla Robotaxi' And 'Robobus' Trademarks Ignoring Prior Art
'A robobus had just rolled up to the curb.'
Scary Grid Safety Robots
'The ultimate horror for our paranoid culture...'
Does AI Provide A Way Forward For Talk Therapy
'And there in the next room by the sofa sat a familiar suitcase, that of his psychiatrist Dr. Smile.'
More SF in the News Stories
More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories
|
 |