Text-to-speech user's voice cooperative server for instant messaging clients

• US 8,428,952 B2
• Filed: 06/12/2012
• Issued: 04/23/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/03/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cerence Operating Company (Cerence Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Nuance Communications, Inc. (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Niemeyer, Terry Wade, Orozco, Liliana
• Primary Examiner(s): Desir, Pierre-Louis
• Assistant Examiner(s): BAKER, MATTHEW H
• Application Number:
  US13/494,164
• Publication Number:
  US 20120253816A1
• Time in Patent Office: 315 Days
• Field of Search: 704270-275
• US Class Current: 704/260
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/00 Speech synthesis; Text to speech systems
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/02 Methods for producing synthetic speech; Speech synthesisers
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/04 Details of speech synthesis systems, e.g. synthesiser structure or memory management
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/06 Elementary speech units used in speech synthesisers; Concatenation rules
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 13/08 Text analysis or generation of parameters for speech synthesis out of text, e.g. grapheme to phoneme translation, prosody generation or stress or intonation determination

Abstract

A system and method to allow an author of an instant message to enable and control the production of audible speech to the recipient of the message. The voice of the author of the message is characterized into parameters compatible with a formative or articulative text-to-speech engine such that upon receipt, the receiving client device can generate audible speech signals from the message text according to the characterization of the author'"'"'s voice. Alternatively, the author can store samples of his or her actual voice in a server so that, upon transmission of a message by the author to a recipient, the server extracts the samples needed only to synthesize the words in the text message, and delivers those to the receiving client device so that they are used by a client-side concatenative text-to-speech engine to generate audible speech signals having a close likeness to the actual voice of the author.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

analyzing text within a body of a first user'"'"'s text instant message to determine text-to-speech synthesis control parameters that are to be used to produce a synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message;

extracting, from text-to-speech synthesis control parameters that are associated with the first user and comprise one or more voice synthesis control parameters which determine distinctive intelligible characteristics representative of the first user, a subset of the text-to-speech synthesis control parameters associated with the first user, the subset corresponding to the text-to-speech synthesis control parameters determined during the analyzing as those that are to be used to produce the synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message;

sending the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters to a second user'"'"'s device, the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters being attached to the text instant message;

receiving the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters by the second user'"'"'s device; and

at the second user'"'"'s device, performing text-to-speech synthesis of the text instant message according to the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters to produce the synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message having the distinctive intelligible characteristics representative of the first user.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising establishing the text to speech synthesis control parameters associated with the first user, and wherein the step of establishing text-to-speech synthesis control parameters associated with the first user comprises establishing one or more voice characteristic parameters compatible with an articulative text-to-speech engine.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising establishing the text to speech synthesis control parameters associated with the first user, and wherein the step of establishing text-to-speech synthesis control parameters associated with the first user comprises establishing one or more phoneme samples of the first user'"'"'s actual voice, the one or more phoneme samples being stored by a server and being compatible with a concatenative text-to-speech engine.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the first user is a sender of the text instant message.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first user is an author of the text instant message.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein sending the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters comprises sending the text instant message and the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters from an authoring device.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein sending the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters comprises sending the text instant message and the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters from a server.

8. A method comprising:

analyzing text within a body of a first user'"'"'s text instant message to determine text-to-speech synthesis control parameters that are to be used to produce a synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message;

extracting, from text-to-speech synthesis control parameters that are associated with the first user and comprise one or more voice synthesis control parameters which determine distinctive intelligible characteristics representative of the first user, a subset of the text-to-speech synthesis control parameters associated with the first user, the subset corresponding to the text-to-speech synthesis control parameters determined during the analyzing as those that are to be used to produce the synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message; and

sending the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters to a second user'"'"'s device, the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters being attached to the text instant message.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the first user is a sender of the text instant message.

10. The method of claim 8, wherein the first user is an author of the text instant message.

11. The method of claim 8, wherein sending the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters comprises sending the text instant message and the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters from an authoring device.

12. The method of claim 8, wherein sending the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters comprises sending the text instant message and the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters from a server.

13. The method of claim 8, wherein analyzing the text within the body of the text instant message to determine the text-to-speech synthesis control parameters that are to be used to produce the synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message comprises analyzing the text within the body of the text instant message to determine which phonemes of a set of possible phonemes are to be used to produce the synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message.

14. At least one computer readable storage device encoded with computer-readable instructions which, when executed, perform a method, the method comprising:

analyzing text within a body of a first user'"'"'s text instant message to determine text-to-speech synthesis control parameters that are to be used to produce a synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message; and

extracting, from text-to-speech synthesis control parameters that are associated with the first user and comprise one or more voice synthesis control parameters which determine distinctive intelligible characteristics representative of the first user, a subset of the text-to-speech synthesis control parameters associated with the first user, the subset corresponding to the text-to-speech synthesis control parameters determined during the analyzing as those that are to be used to produce the synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message; and

sending the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters to a second user'"'"'s device, the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters being attached to the text instant message.

15. The at least one computer readable storage device of claim 14, wherein the first user is a sender of the text instant message.

16. The at least one computer readable storage device of claim 14, wherein the first user is an author of the text instant message.

17. The at least one computer readable storage device of claim 14, wherein sending the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters comprises sending the text instant message and the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters from a server.

18. The at least one computer readable storage device of claim 14, wherein analyzing the text within the body of the text instant message to determine the text-to-speech synthesis control parameters that are to be used to produce the synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message comprises analyzing the text within the body of the text instant message to determine which phonemes of a set of possible phonemes are to be used to produce the synthesized audible representation of the text within the body of the text instant message.

19. The at least one computer readable storage device of claim 14, wherein sending the text instant message along with the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters comprises sending the text instant message and the subset of text-to-speech synthesis control parameters from an authoring device.

20. The at least one computer readable storage device of claim 14, wherein the method further comprises establishing the text to speech synthesis control parameters associated with the first user, and wherein the step of establishing text-to-speech synthesis control parameters associated with the first user comprises establishing one or more phoneme samples of the first user'"'"'s actual voice, the one or more phoneme samples being stored by a server and being compatible with a concatenative text-to-speech engine.