Patent Grant
7415413
This application is related to the U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/902,057, entitled “Methods and Apparatus for Adapting Output Speech in Accordance with Context of Communication,” which is filed concurrently herewith and incorporated by reference herein.
The present invention relates to text-to-speech systems and, more specifically, to methods and apparatus for implicitly conveying the synthetic origin of speech from a text-to-speech system.
In telephony applications, text-to-speech (TTS) systems may be utilized in the production of speech output as part of an automatic dialog system. Typically during a call session, TTS systems first transcribe the words communicated by a caller through a speech recognition engine. A natural language understanding (NLU) unit in communication with the speech recognition engine is used to uncover the meanings behind the caller's words. These meanings may then be interpreted to determine the caller's requested information. This requested information may be retrieved from a database by a dialog manager. The retrieved information is passed to a natural language generation (NLG) block which forms a message for responding to the caller. The message is then spoken by a speech synthesis system to the caller.
A TTS system may be utilized in many current real world applications as a part of an automatic dialog system. For example, a caller to an air travel system may communicate with a TTS system to receive air travel information, such as reservations, confirmations, schedules, etc., in the form of TTS generated speech. To date, the quality of TTS systems has been at such a level that it has been clear to the caller that communication was taking place with an automated system or machine. As TTS systems improve, however, callers may become more likely to believe that they are communicating with a human, or callers may have some doubt as to whether a response during communication came from an automated system. Therefore, due to such confusion concerns, it would be beneficial for callers to be informed about whether they are requesting and receiving information from a machine or a human operator.
Using the technology presently available in TTS systems, the only way to convey information regarding the nature of the communication is to explicitly identify the machine as such during the conversation, preferably at the beginning. For example, the TTS system may provide a message such as “welcome to the automated answering assistant,” or “this is not a human.” While these messages may be enough to avoid confusion in some situations, the caller may not pay attention to the message, forget about the message later in the call, or not understand a more subtle message.
The present invention provides techniques for affecting the quality of speech from a text-to-speech (TTS) system in order to implicitly convey the synthetic origin of the speech.
For example, in one aspect of the invention, a technique for producing speech output in a TTS system is provided. A message is created for communication to a user in a natural language generator of the TTS system. The message is annotated in the natural language generator with a synthetic speech output style. The message is conveyed to the user through a speech synthesis system in communication with the natural language generator, wherein the message capable of being conveyed in accordance with the synthetic speech output style.
In an additional aspect of the invention, the technique described above is performed in an automatic dialog system in response to a received communication from the user in the automatic dialog system. Further, the annotation of the message may be performed manually by a designer of the automatic dialog system through a markup language. The annotation of the message may also be performed automatically in accordance with a defined set of rules.
Advantageously, the present invention conveys a reminder to a caller that communication is taking place with an automated system or a machine. This message is more pleasant for the caller to listen to than a low-quality TTS sample, and more efficient than an additional message that explicitly restates the non-human nature of the response system.
These and other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of illustrative embodiments thereof, which is to be read in connection with the accompanying drawings.
As will be illustrated in detail below, the present invention introduces techniques for implicitly conveying the synthetic origin of speech from a text-to-speech (TTS) system and, more particularly, techniques for annotating a message sent by a TTS system that affect the quality of the message to remind the caller that communication is taking place with an automated system or a machine. The synthetic nature of the speech may be implicitly conveyed to the caller in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention by selectively introducing unnatural effects into the output speech.
Referring initially to
The retrieved information is sent from dialog manager 108 to a natural language generation (NLG) block 110, which forms a message in response to the communication from caller 102. This message includes the requested information retrieved from the database. Once the message is formed in accordance with the embodiment of the present invention, a speech synthesis system 112 plays or outputs the message to the caller, with the requested information and the synthetic speech output style. The combination of NLG block 110 and speech synthesis system 112 makes up the TTS system of the automatic dialog system. The implicit conveyance that the message is from an artificial source through the introduction of a synthetic speech output style is implemented in the TTS system of the automatic dialog system.
The output speech with the synthetic speech output style implicitly conveys to the user the synthetic origin of the message. For example, the message “welcome to the voice-activated message center” may be spoken such that “welcome” and “center” are spoken unnaturally slowly, while “to the” is spoken slightly fast, and “voice-activated message” is spoken very rapidly. Other examples of such effects include, but are not limited to, an occasionally monotone pitch contour, a creaky voice, a buzzy voice, and a vocoder effect, which sounds as if the speaker is speaking into a long tube. Further, it is not necessary for the present invention to be implemented only in response to communication from a caller; the output speech may be produced in any situation in which information is desired to be communicated to a user. Additional embodiments of the present invention may include different automatic dialog system and TTS system components and configurations. The invention may be implemented in any system in which it is desirable to implicitly convey the automated origin of the speech through the style of the speech.
Referring now to
In a preferred embodiment, using a markup language, the designer of the dialog application annotates each “reminder” message generated by the NLG with the required style of artificial production. Examples include the XML document portions shown below:
. . . <prosody style=“artificial” type=“mono-tone”> No problem </prosody> Now, when would you like to return to New York? . . . or,
. . . <prosody style=“artificial” type=“variable-speed”> Now, let's discuss payment. </prosody> How would you like to pay for your tickets? . . .
Speech synthesis systems of TTS engines will respond to the markup by producing the requested style of synthetic speech output. The number of the “reminder” messages and the nature of the introduced artifacts are in the hands of the application developers and are highly dependent on the nature of the application.
If the message is annotated automatically, in block 206, the message is annotated in accordance with a defined set of rules that instruct as to when and where to provide a reminder of the synthetic nature of the system during communication with the caller. This built-in mechanism decides which sentences should contain a synthetic speech output style and what those synthetic speech output styles should be. A simple example of such a rule would be “on the first sentence and every 10 sentences thereafter, vary the speed on the central word of the utterance.” Alternatively, the system could randomly assign certain sentences to contain a synthetic speech output style, and randomly choose which synthetic speech output style to include.
Referring now to
As shown, the computer system may be implemented in accordance with a processor 310, a memory 312, I/O devices 314, and a network interface 316, coupled via a computer bus 318 or alternate connection arrangement.
It is to be appreciated that the term “processor” as used herein is intended to include any processing device, such as, for example, one that includes a CPU (central processing unit) and/or other processing circuitry. It is also to be understood that the term “processor” may refer to more than one processing device and that various elements associated with a processing device may be shared by other processing devices.
The term “memory” as used herein is intended to include memory associated with a processor or CPU, such as, for example, RAM, ROM, a fixed memory device (e.g., hard drive), a removable memory device (e.g., diskette), flash memory, etc.
In addition, the phrase “input/output devices” or “I/O devices” as used herein is intended to include, for example, one or more input devices for entering speech or text into the processing unit, and/or one or more output devices for outputting speech associated with the processing unit. The user input speech and the TTS system annotated output speech may be provided in accordance with one or more of the I/O devices.
Still further, the phrase “network interface” as used herein is intended to include, for example, one or more transceivers to permit the computer system to communicate with another computer system via an appropriate communications protocol.
Software components including instructions or code for performing the methodologies described herein may be stored in one or more of the associated memory devices (e.g., ROM, fixed or removable memory) and, when ready to be utilized, loaded in part or in whole (e.g., into RAM) and executed by a CPU.
Although illustrative embodiments of the present invention have been described herein with reference to the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to those precise embodiments, and that various other changes and modifications may be made by one skilled in the art without departing from the scope or spirit of the invention.
| Number | Name | Date | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5745877 | Nijmam et al. | Apr 1998 | A |
| 20030028380 | Freeland et al. | Feb 2003 | A1 |
| 20050234727 | Chiu | Oct 2005 | A1 |
| 20060080107 | Hill et al. | Apr 2006 | A1 |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20060229872 A1 | Oct 2006 | US |
