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kleinbl00  ·  2511 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: In case you hadn't noticed, text to speech has gotten eerily good

My beef is that the only reason you would use TTS is as part of a UI not involving your eyes. UIs not involving your eyes involve other forms of input. If it's TTS, it probably involves being spoken to and speaking back and "that girl did a video involving star wars lipstick" is an answer to a number of questions. Are they imperative? Inquisitive? Sullen? Happy? Yeah, the machines read very well. But really - take a neural network with a shit-ton of subtitles and it'll learn to read.

I don't give a fuck.

The problem is that when shitfucks like Google go "ohboy! our TTS engine is fuckin grrrrrreat!" they don't even think about the fact that they're taking a communication system that's laden with context and stripping it out to fuckall.

Today Google refused to text one of my friends because "there are several Brians in your address book" and despite the fact that his last name is phonetic, it fuckin' choked. But it didn't say "I'm sorry, I don't understand" it said "maybe you should try again later when it's safe to use your phone." Apple, bless their black hearts, don't lock the screen when using Carplay. They let you violate the law to your heart's content.

Google? Google thinks this shit is ready for prime time and it so isn't.

The car stereo used to be named, prosaically, "DMX7704S." I renamed it "Hot Lip Fungus."