Techknow a show about innovations that can change lives. Genetically modified food. We are going to restore the intersection of hardware and humanity, and we are doing it a new way. This is a show about science by scientists. Techknow investigators giving voice to the voiceless. Welcome to kechknow. I am phil torres. We meet someone knew, they will often make immediate decisions about who you are based upon your general appearance and what your face looks like and what you are wearing but, also, on the sounds of a your voice . Its true. There are tennessee of millions who cant speak or have limited speech. Two and a half million of them are right here in the sglurns. Of those two and a half million, 40 use some kind of text to speech to communicate but they all sound pretty much alike. At the youngs home, this point. Thats because 16yearold sara young was about to get a gift like no other. Her very own voice. She has been known as savvy sarah, happy and joyful. Sarah was born with Cerebral Palsy leaving her unable speak but had he she and her mom have plenty to say. Hello, everyone. My name is sarah. I am 16. Sarah talks mostly through a text to speech app on her computer. I am see it. The computerized voice is heather. Its standard equipment. Why was the heather voice inappropriate for sarah . It had an older tone to it, speaking in this if thelyformed female adult voice with a digital sound to it. It was funny, weird hearing it to an unfamiliar listener, it kind of became white voice. Alone. Here. It was somebody else, you know, from school or someone else with that voice. My name is meg. I am 9 years old. If you think that that will sounds a lot like sarah, you are right. Its because they both use the heather voice. My voice isnt me. It sounds like a robot. Agree. She doesnt have a voice that sounds like her. You see her eyes and you see her smile, the way she moves and looks at you. Its. Its not her own personality its still an adult voice. May . Yes. What do you think having your own voice will do for you . It would be cool. I will sound like a kid. Creating a viable way to build unique voices for those unable to speak is the brain child of speech scientist ruppel id. We are going to go back in that booth and have you say some vowels like you did last time like ahh. Can you say that now . Ahh. Beautiful what we are doing at vocal id is we are taking a tiny sample of someones voice voice. Lets do it another time. Lets do it another time. We are trying to make it sound like the person who the tiny sound was from. Thats the scientific challenge. With thousands of English Speaking donors from around the world, ruppel and jeff, the director of research and technology, are voices. Can you kind of walk us through how a voice is made . Yes. This is sarah here this is an example of what she gave us. Hum. Sarahs natural voice . Thats her voice. When we speak, there is air in our lungs. We force it out. It goes through our trachea and hits the larynx and the vocal cords and those vibrate and from that produces a sound. Its shaped by your tongue and knows. She cant properly shape her vocal tract to produce each. We separate the vocal tract and we take the donor and do the opposite. We toss away whats going on in the vocal cords and keep going on with what their tongue and lips are doing. Like an Online Dating service, the computer matches acoustical patterns with the recipient. We train the synthesizer. What do you mean by that . Training it . We are training it on different parts of speech. Up here, its recording which parts of speech have been captured and like the basic united of speech. In english, there are about 40, i think. This here, ai and this here is an th south. Foiptd give a voice . This is our home page. From there, click on it. Give a vis. You can say, ahh. Its ready to record. Record and speak. Every now and then, you surprise me. Stop and play. Every now and then, you surprise me. A full donation runs 3500 sentences, about four hours. To capture all of the possible sounds needed for speech. Lets do it another time. Lets do it another time. 2000 miles from sarah down in austin, texas, 16yearold lia white was sporadically donating her voice. Then she got an email from vocal id. They said we found a match for your voice. I actually printed out sarahs pictures right here, and i hung it up on my Bulletin Board to remind me donating. This was what they sent me as an email. There was someone on the other end that motivated me to get that done. Lo and behold, sarahs voice is now with her. Yay. When techknow returns. Hello, how are you . After years of hearing heather, sarah is going to get a voice of her very own. How do you feel about getting rid of heather . Byebye. I will bring the old away and now the new. We want to hear what you think about these stories. Join the conversation by inside story takes you beyond the headlines, beyond the quick cuts, beyond the soundbites. Were giving you a deeper dive into the stories that are making our world what it is. This is a big day for sarah young, a big day, too, for the team at vocal id. Speech scientist rupl patel and jeff meltzner are giving sarah a created. How heather . New. The startelegram standardized choice from her text to speech Computer Program talkers. How did you come up with the idea for building voices. In 2002 i was at a conference in denmark and i saw a girl and a man using different devices but the exact voice. I saw that happening all around me. Whats groundbreaking about sarahs voice is that itsnique milking the donor speech with the few sounds sarah can make to capture sarahs personality. Is there any art industry or psychology involved in creating a voice . Yeah. I think every science has an art form to it as well. In the case of making a custom voice, its not only about is it understandable . Its about is it authentic and does it resonate with the person using it . Do they feel like its them . So sarah, amy, what we have done is gotten two voices ready for you today. And we want to play them and whichever one you choose, we will load to your device. Voice 1. Hi. My name is sarah. I am 16 years old and i. What do you think of that voice . Do you like it . A little bit. Here is number 2. Hi, my name is sarah. I am 16 years old. 2. Goodness. What do you like about 2 . It is funky. Yeah. Like you. Do you want it loaded on your device or think about it, heather . Okay. Thats the next thing we can do. All right. Okay. Good how do you feelawesome. There is a feeling you feel. The word swat spunky to describe the voice. She feels spunky. She is spunky and the world needs to hear her. Your machine. I am here. You can do it. I am glad you knew that. How does it make you feel . Awesome. Voice . Surprise. Hey, sarah. I was watching you, you chose your voice. I also like the second voice. A happy girl. Now, you have a sassy voice to go with it. The real test would come the next day at the school in lexington, massachusetts. Good morning, sarah. Are you excited to show your classmates your new voice . As we headed to sarahs class, i was nervous for her because we all know how critical High School Kids can be. Sara is getting a new voice. Right . Her voice is individualized. No one else has it, like our voices. Right . No one else has our voices. So you have the same voice as sarah. Right . Could we hear your voice . Hi. My name is elizabeth. Can someone describe what that sounds like . It sounds pretty good. Right . Like siri on your iphone. Are we ready for sarahs new voice . Hello. My name is sassy sarah. How are you liking it . Awesome. Can we hear Something Else . I like things that a lot of girls like, like sleepovers, chock look at, high backseats. With a show of hands, who likes this sarahs new voice better . All right. Having your own voice shows your personality. Sarah is not the only one at school with a newer voice. Only nines years old,maeve was using the new voice. My voice sounds like a robot. Maeves sister made the voice. My coins, the first thing i want to here maeve say is i love you, aaron. And maeves dad new what he wanted to hear . I love you, daddy. I would love to hear that in a voice i recognize as maeves. Hi, maeve. I am lindsey. Maeve, you have had your new voice for about a week now, i think. Tell me what you think of it. Ty like my new special voice. I can talk to everyone. Everyone is excited to hear my voice today. I heard your dad say that he was really looking forward to hearing you tell him that you loved him using your new voice. So have you done that yet . Kind of. Kind of . Why is having a unique voice so important . It makes us human. We make judgments about people. I feel like its very important for people who dont need devices to talk to have that same ability to project who they are and to be known as people and not just robots that is. I hope i helped you out. That was an incredible piece. It shows you the value of donating what you have. You dont think about voice donations . I dont think we think about how important a voice is. One of the most moving moments for me was watching sarah debut her voice for her classmates and having them discuss how important it was for each of them to have a unique voice. Particularly for those with limited speech. They all cited having their own voice as a way not tonal communicate but to be able to fend for yourself, speak for yourself. Its really such an important part our personality did we dont think about. Your voice is your number 1 advocate. So especially within this disability community, how feasible is it . Is it acceptable . Is it expensive . Right now, its expensive, about 1,250 to develop a voice through vocal id but the hope of the company is to make it cheaper to make it more accessible and potentially to be covered by health insurance. I think what is interesting is yours is about improving upon the past conditions. You have a storyb preparing for the future. Grammy awardwinning jazz singer cassandra wilson. Everyone comes into the world with their unique voice. The question is, do you know how to develop it . Her life, legacy and songwriting secrets. Tapping into a spirituality inside of the music is very important. I lived that character. Go oneonone with americas movers and shakers. We will be able to see change. Gone. We have met one of millions of people who have a limited ability to speak. Technology is there to help them. Kara in your case, you are about to tell us about somebody who knows in the future they will lose their voice. A touch position to be in. Al. L. S maybe throat cancer. There are a lot of degenerative conditions in which you know you may lose your voice. A new program, my own voice, helps you capture the essence of your voice so yournique characteristics shine through. Lets check it out. I was diagnosed officially in july of 2014 with a. L. S. , also known as lou gehrigs disease. She is a reporter for rice media. In simpler terms, you completely lose all function, but you feel everything, and you are aware of everything. So, its like getting trapped in the quicksand and losing a day. What kind of symptoms ri dealing with . Now, i lost most of my fine motor skills. Its almost impossible to type. Its frustrating. Perhaps the most cruel loss, the ability to speak. What about your speech . I do notice that my tongue is starting to twitch which is a sign that the muscle is looking for that signal from the brain and not getting it. Life . When i came to the u. S. , i learned english watching t. V. Specifically, the simpsons with closed captioning. My speech is probably just runofthemill, midwest, what you hear on t. V. Is he the only guy you have left in are you trying to get through the day with less sleep . To prepare for the inevitable silence, she is recording the 1500 sentences for a revolutionary text to Speech Program called my own voice. It creates a synthetic voice that will capture the essence of her speech. Why did you think that that would be a good idea . I usually, at first, i didnt think it was a good idea. Could you write another script for us . Your voice and how you communicate in the and the cadennce which you say something, i am going to completely lose that. Thats why i cant be excited about a robot voice. His reaction to the article . Yay now, i am actually done. Thats better. Maggie is an assistant Technology Speech specialist who is evaluating my own voice. A choice of shoes to wear. He is big, the way water buffalo are big. The sentences literally make no sense. No. Because with these phrases, they are getting all of those sounds that they need. It fills the voice on the gramat cal rules and the pronunciation. So you will never hear these sentences good. The software is going to take all of the sounds and chunk them all out. Vincent paoel explains how it is done. Impress sglif it actually comes from the word. Word . President. And if i take the syllab syllable, it comes from. . Detective. They are going to make the word impressive. An ocean away from acapella, angelina is ready to hear her my. Okay. So the sentence i typed in was, i came here expecting cup cakes. I have very little expectations for this. I came here expecting cupcakes. Thats kind of creepy. It sounds just like me. The kadance is a little bit off. The actual tone is exactly like me. Angelina tried a sentence . This will say, hello, i am voice. Hello. I am angelina and this is my robot voice . Sounds a little awkward. It sounds like i turned into a robot. I wanted to hear robot me, although i only recorded about half of the required sentences. And as a refugee from college i screwed that up. The following week when i logged in to get my voice, my expectations were low. My dogs name is killer. I am going to call him. Killer, here, boy. Come to your mama. I am not impressed. I dont think he is coming. He doesnt come when i call him either. A lot of people dont realize actually the first synthetic voice was made fo hawking for ibm. In some ways we identify with him but not aefshl would wants to sound like him. Or like heather, which is the synthetic voice that most fem users have. It will be interesting to see. Even in the cases of sarah and maeve. 9yearold girl and a 16yearold girl. Whats going to happen when they age out of those voices . You know, this idea of voice donation, of blending the sounds you can make with the donated voice or voice banking, is a technology thats wild. Its amazing but i dont know if the technology is quite there yet. There is a lot that goes in to a voice, the sides of your lungs, the shape of your throat, the muscles in your tongue and your face. All of these things are quite complex so at this understandable that a software, a synthetic thing that is not a human, it human, its it struggles to sound exactly like us and to sound natural. Maybe 1500 sentences isnt enough. Maybe what we could be doing in the future is taking every recording we have ever had and blending it in to a voice to use for posterity. Thats a cool thing about living with modern technology. There are recordings of phones. Here on the show, we have met people like in this case who are trying to make life with these conditions better. We have also met scientists and innovators trying to cure these conditions. Its two battle fronts. Interesting stuff. Thank you for your stories. Thats it for techknow. Go blind the scenes at aljazeera. Com techknow. Follow expert contributeers on twitter, instagram, google and more refugees arrive in greece but face being forced back to turkey under the new e. U. Deal hello youre watching al jazeera live from doha. Also ahead d. N. A. Tests to help identify the suicide bomber who killed four people in istanbul. The republic of congo where a longtime leader is looking to day in power and the u. S. And cubas tumultuous