Here's Why Google's Assistant Sounds More Realistic Than Ever Before

If you're playing around with Google's new Home Max or Mini smart speakers, or if you're just using an Android phone such as the new Pixel 2, you may be familiar with the Google Assistant virtual helper. And if you've done so in the last couple days, you may have noticed that the virtual assistant's voice is sounding more realistic than before. That's because Alphabet's Google has started using a cutting-edge piece of technology called WaveNet--developed by its DeepMind "artificial intelligence" division--in Google Assistant. Synthesized speech is traditionally created by gluing together bits of recorded speech, in a technique known as "concatenative text-to-speech." The result does not sound natural, although some versions of the technique are better than others.