Remember just in the last week, I blogged twice about computer-generated voices in new technology devices now on the market?
Kindle-2 Text-to-Speech…the Future of Voice Acting?
Automated Voices
Today, Stephanie Ciccarelli of VOICES.com is taking notice too…and taking action. See her appeal below (link just under my logo), and then make sure and click on the link at the bottom of her article, to MAKE YOUR HUMAN VOICE HEARD.
CourVO
1. Voiceover = A Human Voice Recording a Custom Performance... right?
Apple has just released their newest version of the iPod Shuffle and one of its
new features is referred to as "voiceover", which as you can imagine piqued my
interest, touting that the device can speak 14 languages.
Deeper research into the matter revealed that no voice actors were actually
hired to record for the iPod Shuffle, nor were any "voiceovers" recorded for the
3rd generation of the iPod Shuffle. The "voiceover" feature pulls phonemes and
other sound bites (or bytes!) from the voice stored in your computer, and
depending on which type you have (Mac or PC), a different voice will read out
song titles, artist names and playlists.
One can assume that "Voiceover", by Apple's definition, means synthetic,
computer generated voices, basically, text-to-speech (TTS).
Does this matter a great deal? Yes!
Due to the fact that Apple is a very large entity with a great web presence, the
term "voiceover" could quickly become associated with Apple's "voiceover"
feature, which as we have discovered, isn't voiceover, at least in the purist
sense, at all.
Will we as an industry stand for this?
Have your say here:
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://blogs.voices.com%2Fvoxdaily%2F2009%2F03%2Fvoiceover.html
