She'll be back! // F1 podcasting with artificial intelligence

Published 29 May 2017 by Mr. C One of the trickiest problems we have struggled to resolve at Sidepodcast is how to produce timely news podcasts when Mrs Christine is unwell. I lack the talent to step in to replace her and we've bounced around all manner of alternate ideas from leaning on the community to record shows for us, to cutting up old recordings to splice together new sentences. It turns out this girl is hard to replace. Over the weekend Christine was out with a cold, so we trialled a new idea - using synthesised artificial intelligence from the geniuses at Amazon to speak aloud instead. Amazon describe their product as an "AI service that uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize speech that sounds like a human voice". There are various regional dialects to choose from.