Speech Synthesis for the Generation of Artificial Personality

Abstract

A synthetic voice personifies the system using it. In this work we examine the impact text content, voice quality and synthesis system have on the perceived personality of two synthetic voices. Subjects rated synthetic utterances based on the Big-Five personality traits and naturalness. The naturalness rating of synthesis output did not correlate significantly with any Big-Five characteristic except for a marginal correlation with openness. Although text content is dominant in personality judgments, results showed that voice quality change implemented using a unit selection synthesis system significantly affected the perception of the Big-Five, for example tense voice being associated with being disagreeable and lax voice with lower conscientiousness. In addition a comparison between a parametric implementation and unit selection implementation of the same voices showed that parametric voices were rated as significantly less neurotic than both the text alone and the unit selection system, while the unit selection was rated as more open than both the text alone and the parametric system. The results have implications for synthesis voice and system type selection for applications such as personal assistants and embodied conversational agents where developing an emotional relationship with the user, or developing a branding experience is important.

The Human Takes It All: Humanlike Synthesized Voices Are Perceived as Less Eerie and More Likable. Evidence From a Subjective Ratings Study

“…Adding signs and pauses, as well as semantic free utterances, such as gibberish speech, squeaks, moans, laughter and whirring noises can contribute to understanding of their value in Textto-Speech systems (Aylett et al, 2020). For instance, in a study by Aylett et al (2017) a tense voice was rated as more disagreeable and a negligible voice was associated with lower conscientiousness. Additionally, it is crucial to examine what combination of vocal qualities creates a particular personality and if an a-priory specified personality matches the perceived one.…”

“…Lacking embodied cues in a voice apparently makes this intentionality attribution more difficult. In future design of artificial agents it is important that the voice be in harmony with the agent's appearance, making the personality of the character coherent (Aylett et al, 2017(Aylett et al, , 2019. Embodiment of artificial agents should be considered not only via their bodies but also through their voice and speech.…”

What an “Ehm” Leaks About You: Mapping Fillers into Personality Traits with Quantum Evolutionary Feature Selection Algorithms

“…For example, interactive artificial agents such as social robots [79], companions [80] or Embodied Conversational Agents [81] can infer the personality traits of their users from the fillers these utter and adapt their behavior correspondingly (see, e.g., [82] for the benefits resulting from matching the personality of the users). Finally, fillers can be synthesized to make artificial voices more effective in conveying personality traits [83].…”

Sozial interagierende Roboter in der Pflege

“…Diese basiert auf Audiodaten, welche zuvor von einem menschlichen Sprecher aufgezeichnet wurden. Zurzeit gibt es zwei verbreitete Ansätze (Aylett et al 2017)…”