So I have done a couple of YouTube videos lately where I have had to do voiceovers and despite spending the last 20+ years talking to people for a living I’m not sure I like the sound of my own voice.
Well with all the new crazy AI stuff kicking about I thought that I would have a look at the one area that I have not looked into yet. AI text-to-speech (AI-TTS) and see if it can do my voice-over for me.
If you don’t already know most modern operating systems already have TTS built into the OS and considering they process on the fly they are not too bad.
I often use the iPhone accessibility “two finger swipe down” on my phone to read the current web page I am on when I’m busy. When you use it at often as I do the quality of the voice generation feels more than sufficient to get through a two-thousand-word News article without any issues.
So how has AI and machine learning, large language models improved TTS?
Well here is a voice-over created in almost real-time speed of my last blog post about Bing AI search:
I’ve been digesting the announcement from Microsoft on the launch of its AI-powered Bing search. Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, the creators of the ground braking ChatGPT AI chatbot is now paying off in ways so big that I don’t think anybody truly understands how impactful this is yet.
Bing’s new AI search is so good, it hurts my head and yes it will take some time for people to get used to it, but when they do…. Internet search will be changed forever.
Anyone that has tried ChatGPT will have had that moment of amazement. The way that it will not only answer your questions in detail ,but will also let you step it up to “write me an example essay about it” and down to “can you explain it to me like I’m five”.
These amazing responses have been done while still running a old version of the AI and with no recent information or access to the internet.
Well now OpenAI and Microsoft have opened the Flood gates and given it access to the whole internet. They have also customised how it works to be focused on supporting internet searches.
You could ask how many cans of beer will fit in the boot of your Vauxhall. It will search the internet for the owners manual, find the dimensions of your boot, then calculate the answer using the average size of a can of beer.
It will give you the right answer, but it won’t JUST give you the right answer; it will give you detailed context on why it’s given you that answer. It will let you know that the capacity of the boot and shape of it will not allow you to perfectly fill it as not all the sides are straight, instead it will give you its best guess… and it will give you the links to all the places it searched to get that answer.
You could search for a new dress and once you have found one you can ask it to see if it can find you a bag that would match that dress. It will search fashion sites to find out what colours work best together, check that against your dress then search for bag’s that match.
It’s hard to fully get your head around how unreal this new AI search is.
Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips did a live demo on “The WAN Show” recently where he put it through it’s paces and at some points he was totally gob-smacked and speechless on how good it performed.
To use the service you need to join a waiting list or you can “jump the queue” by going all in on Microsoft Edge Browser, Default search to Bing and downloading the Bing search App.
Google have some work to do to play catch up and for Microsoft they have nothing to loose. Microsoft are the underdog of search when (not if) this works out for them they are going to sky rocket, search was worth $257 Billion in 2021. Something tells me google are not going to be leader for much longer.
Anyone else wish they had stock in Microsoft right now.
