The recent Esquire article about Roger Ebert made mention of an effort on the part of a software developer to create a voice synthesizer using actual audio clips of Ebert’s own speaking voice to make it sound more like his natural voice. Ebert is appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s show this week and was expected to debut the software on the show, but he has scooped her by posting this little video clip online:
It isn’t *quite* there, but you can definitely hear characteristics of his voice that sound familiar. Bravo, Roger.
ADDENDUM: TechCrunch has a post with quite a bit of information about how this software was developed.
Wow. That is very cool.
What an amazing story.