My first direct encounter with a GPS system was in the back of my partner’s parents’ (I guess you can call them my sort-of In-Laws) SUV. A female voice calmly instructed my sort-of-father-in-law to turn onto route 95.”But that’s not the right way!” He was very exasperated. His wife said something in response that probably amounted to “Honey, every time you go against the GPS, we get hopelessly lost.” But she probably didn’t use the word “hopelessly.” It was however, what I was thinking at the time. And oh, did we get lost. After about 700 hours in the car we did eventually arrive at our destination. In this situation, it did seem that the GPS didn’t really help us calm my sort-of-father -law. If anything, she seemed to inspire further irritation. At some point I do think there was a “Shut up!” and an eventual silencing of the GPS.
However, my experience is something of a challenge the argument made in a New York Times article last week in which Bruce Feiler confessed to falling for his female GPS voice (he is kind of joking, but not really). He writes that many–men at least–have been having sexy thoughts about their GPS voices. Felier uses the work of Dr. Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford and a consultant for many car companies, to discuss the ideas that surround these disembodied female voices, that are often voices of actual woman. In the article Nass is quoted as saying that female voices are more likable, but male voices are seen as more competent. He also states that either way both men and women prefer female voices because they are seen as less threatening.
So maybe my experience isn’t as much of a challenge as I thought–perhaps our female GPS voice was seen as incompetent. That being said, my sort-of-father-in-law also thinks map quest and google maps are incompetent, and, as someone who has been totally and utterly screwed by mapquest–I was was led onto some weird army reserve in New Jersey, which was certainly not where I was headed– I have to somewhat agree with that.
Anyhow. I think this article seems to gloss over what seems to me to be a sticky mire of gender issues– that we long to hear submissive female voices that desire only to cater to every need strikes me as something troubling. And the flip-side of submission is incompetence? Yikes.
I also think that if we’re going to do sexy GPS voices, not being equal opportunity is a missed opportunity. Does that fix the problem I mentioned? Not really. However, if people are responding to voices this way, I’m sure there are a number of straight women and gay men who might want a sexy Johnny Depp or Jake Gyllenhaal type voice to tell them how to get where they’re going.
I can only hope that some customers do want spunkier confident female voices to tell us where to go. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a little variation to the monotony of a GPS voice that could even be customized. Like a voice that sounds like my best friend saying, “Hey, lady, don’t miss the next exit.” And I have to say, she has a very confident tone without harboring any judgement at all.
post script:
You can watch this totally bizarre video that was linked to the times article of a woman who does the voice over for some airlines. What’s funny to me is she sounds she’s trying to sound more automated even though she’s a real person. What is up with that, speech-heads?
Thinking about having a baby? There might be a number of ways to prepare from taking a parenting class to learning how to change a diaper. However, now, dear speech-heads, you can practice by interacting with Yotaro, a errie luminescent baby robot created by students at University of Tsukuba.
Yotaro does more than just glow; he cries and pours fake baby snot from a tiny implanted tube; responds to touch and can be calmed by a rattle attached to sensors. The creators fused odd somewhat realistic and non-realistic features to create him since Yotaro’s face is a two dimensional projection from a computer program, but his “skin” is silicone warmed up by warm water. (Insert Yikes here).
His movements are also synthesized by motors beneath a baby blanket. You can see more of this bizarre spectacle in the video.
While I admit encountering fake baby robot snot is not on my list of priorities, as far as robots go, this blog has seen a lot weirder.
My favorite voice avatar might be “whispery” which is accompanied by an image of feathers floating in what is probably supposed to be wind, but looks more like smoke. The voice is, as you might guess, a whispery, creepy voice that sounds straight out of a b-movie. But then again there’s “Evil Genius.” It’s so hard to choose!
“Whispery” and “Evil Genius” are just two of Voice Forge’s voice avatars, which allows you or your company to choose a particular voice or voices based on your needs. Each avatar has an image to help you understand what the voice might sound like. You can test out all the voices on the website and make them say whatever you want. For example, I can make the voice “Evil Genius” say “Speech brother Adam B. likes Hannah Montana–he must pay,” or “I have an ingrown hair in my evil genius goatee.”
Voice Forge’s goal is to keep automated voices from sounding “corporate and boring.” You know, just in case your corporate image involves being a “jerkface.” Also, if you were wondering, Jerkface is a pissed off white guy with a hoodie making a blurred angry gesture at you. Who else?
“Wiseguy” is a fellow whose eyes are shadowed by a straw hat (straw hat? I might be behind in my mobsterology, but really?) To me some of the voices sound just like the other TTS voices I’ve heard. But I have to give bonus points to the voice avatar simply labeled dog. It features a dog that might be a beagle of some kind. No matter what you type in the TTS space, you just hear barking.
So, speech-heads, world cup season has descended upon us in all its sweaty rowdy glory. I should disclose now: I remain mostly ambivalent about sports in general, but I know some of you are excited and can’t stop talking and blogging about the world cup (not to mention those of you who painting your faces. For you, I have no comment).
Anyhow, this all brings me to the recent xbox 360 addition (which will be available for November, so maybe in time for the other “football”), Kinect. Kincect’s selling point is that you control it with your (possibly wild) gestures and voice. You will be able to talk live with friends about the game, so you can heckle and argue in real-time. Basically, now it’s not only your family (and neighbors) who might hear what you think of the Yankees.* You can have your own network of hecklers.
Microsoft also states in its release that the camera will pan the room to follow you (useful, but creepy) and that the system will be intuitive.
Also, what’s of more interest to me and speech-brother Adam B. is the music component, which will have seven million songs that one can play music using voice commands or gestures. The catch: you’ll have pay for a subscription from Zune. But with that price comes possibilities for spying, er, observing what your friends are playing and, as usual, you will be able to get suggestions on what music you might like. Though I can already tell you, I’m not always into what Adam B.’s listening to.
Oh, and of course there are video games. To control these games, you move or make gestures (the press release says you’ll be able to simply kick a ball by kicking your foot.) There’s also movies, etc., for all the details, go to the website.
*for the record, don’t come after me. I remain firmly on the fence with this whole Yankees versus whomever conversation. Leave me out of it. I’ll be drinking iced coffee and watching Iron Chef. Now, Flay versus Morimoto, that I’ll have an opinion about.
My grandmother was obsessed with jeopardy. Everyone knew: you don’t call Katie between the hours of seven and seven-thirty EST because she would be planted on her balding easy chair, watching The Show. She will not be taking your call.
Unfortunately, my grandmother was losing her sight as well as her hearing, which probably meant the next door neighbors were listening to jeopardy as well.
My grandma Katie, rest her soul, probably would have liked the talking television from Ocean Blue Software, a company based in the UK and Korea. The telly will be able to use text to speech to read programming schedules so viewers (or TV listeners) with failing sight (or no sight at all) can hear what’s going to be on. There is also an option that allows viewers to change fonts–so a person could potentially enlarge fonts used in the guide.
Soon the company says it will also allow a person the ability to change the channels with a simple voice command of “channel up,” “channel down,” or even “volume up.”
Unfortunately, at the moment, the talking television is only available in the UK, but who knows, dear speechheads, who knows.
Think you can lift that? Better ask Santos first. Who’s this Santo’s fellow, you might ask, and where do I find him? Well, on your computer of course.
Santos is the first biofidelic avatar–for you speech-heads who cut Latin class that loosely translates to something like ‘true to life’ avatar. Basically, it means that Santos is modeled after humans (or more specifically an average man) to test how strenous a task might be for a real person.
Recently, the company that created Santos, SantosHuman Inc., also created a female avatar–Sophia– who will as strong as 65% of the female population.
Santos was originally modeled by the U.S. Department of Defense as part of the University of Iowa’s Virtual Soldier reserach program as a way to “ease physical strain on soldiers.”
Last month, Ford aquired Santos to ensure that their workers don’t subject themselves to dangerous physical duties. Not only can Santos predict physical stress, he can also talk to you about it using a windows based XP voice recognition.
At first I imagine him saying ‘Why’d you make me bald, I mean, come on,’ but I think its more likely he’d say something about his level of fatigue.
You’ll be coming to SpeechTEK, NYC. Why? Not only because NYC is one of the greatest places to visit for the sightseeing and the food (seriously, have you had better pizzaanywhere else?) but also because this SpeechTEK is not to be missed if you are indeed a true speechhead.
The designer–whose name seems to be absent from any piece of information about Qbo–says in his blog that he envisioned Qbo as something “small, something similar to a cat or dog, it would interact with me in a logical way and would look nice in my environment.”
The designer goes on to say that he values the importance of a robot that could use speech recognition and synthesis to talk with you, and hopefully Qbo’s artificial intelligence could continue to improve. Qbo also possesses stereoscopic vision and Wifi/Bluetooth connections. Its ultrasound sensors keep Qbo from crashing into walls and other things that might block his path.
As it stands, however, the information on Qbo and what exactly it will be able to do is shrouded in mystery. The designer alludes to surprising new features and claims that the robot will be available for “affordable” prices, but we don’t know yet what exactly that will be; my guess is somewhere between an iPad and the dinosaur robot put out by Kokoro.
Kathleen Savino —
June 29, 2010 @ 11:26 am 
