Google DeepMind's AI can mimic realistic human speech

It's still pretty easy to tell whether it's a real person who's talking or a text-to-speech program. But there might come a time when a robot could dupe you into thinking that you're speaking with a real person, thanks to a new AI called WaveNet developed by Google's DeepMind team. They have a pretty good track record when it comes to building neural networks -- you probably know them as the folks who created AlphaGo, the AI that defeated one of the world's best Go players. Currently, developers use one of two methods to create speech programs. One involves using a large collection of words and speech fragments spoken by a single person, which makes sounds and intonations hard to manipulate.