Lyrebird

Found via an episode of The World in Words about speech synthesis: Lyrebird. Read a minimum of thirty sentences into your computer’s microphone (example: “I usually like to eat flying tomato salad”), and Lyrebird creates a digital version of your voice.

I tried Lyrebird this afternoon, with just thirty sentences, and the voice that resulted is pretty plausible. (A demonstration.) I could never mistake this voice for my own, but it does sound something like me, a sleepy me, a world-weary me, a me beset by ennui. But Lyrebird doesn’t know how to pronounce ennui, not yet anyway.

I don’t want to begin to imagine the uses that such technology might serve. (That’s me talking.)