exactly the way that he used to speak. text to speech technology has been around for a while. we all remember microsoft sam, right? sam speaks monotonously: h 3 voice sounded a tad monotonous. peter provided far more than the average voice sample recording amount 15 hours worth of material. in order to make a voice, you take that audio and you use a neural net system to learn how the sounds in the voice relate to the words that are being spoken. once you have that model built, you can put a new set of words in and it will produce a new output with that voice. to better convey sentiment for specific scenarios, peter captured himself speaking in four different styles. tone of voice is very important. tone of voice is very important! tone of voice is very important. he also tirelessly recorded 3,000 stock phrases, which he can quickly
the ransomware attack could lead to shortages of meat or raise prices for consumers. a drone has filmed itself crashing into the lava flow of a volcano. it happened in the south west of iceland, where youtube and drone pilotjoey helms tried capturing the fagradalsfjall volcano, which has been erupting since march. and finally, a not at all creepy robot which copies you. scientists at columbia university in new york used deep learning to teach robot ava to mimic the expressions of people around it. ava can express six basic emotions anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise. the aim of the technology is to build trust between humans and robotic co workers and caregivers in real world applications, such as hospitals, schools and homes. of course, these machines are not softening us up before they become our robotic overlords. the hay festival is steeped in tradition
this is the newly opened flight of the sky lion at legoland, the uk s first flying theatre ride and i m lucky enough to be in before it opens to the public. the only person on one of seven gondolas spread across three floors. the ultimate in social distancing. it is a wonderful, complex mix of creativity and technology. behind the scenes, the maintenance team kindly put the ride into manual. when the ride starts the gondola rotates towards and into a concave, 20 metre high screen. here is a close up of the motorised mechanics in action, which is surprisingly quiet. there are three for each axis, allowing for a 30 degrees swing and 23 degrees pitch, and degrees of yore, or left to right. and, during the ride, fragrant mist is sprayed on board canisters so that we can smell sea air baby lava dragon burps.