ScotRail is set to replace a controversial AI voice on trains, after criticism from a professional voiceover artist. Gayanne Potter's Scottish accent was used to teach station announcer "Iona", but she said it was a surprise to hear a "dreadful" robotic version of herself. ScotRail introduced the voice in May, provide by Swedish tech firm ReadSpeaker, to replace pre-recorded human announcements on some services. Transport Scotland said the rail operator now intended to introduce an alternative voice "as soon as practicable". ScotRail has not confirmed if this will be a human recording or another AI-trained voice.

OpenAI's recent release of Whisper boasts human-level robustness and accuracy in speech recognition. I'm not Scottish (although I was born pretty close), but I immediately wanted to test it with a Scottish accent and compare it to "human-level". Having bought an unexciting new iPhone, at least I could put its A16 Bionic chip with 16-core Neural Engine through its paces for my experiment. Once the boring tech stuff was out of the way, I shared the test app on TestFlight with a few colleagues, yielding much amusement with its borderline magical results. Here's a little clip from the start of Trainspotting, which is particularly challenging for machines to understand; a Scottish accent over the top of Iggy Pop isn't something you'd train for.

In the hope of making the most realistic sex doll yet, designers have created a bot that they claim can fall in love with its user. The bizarre doll, named Harmony 2.0, talks in a Scottish accent, and can be programmed with 18 different personality traits, including'shy' and'sexual.' A new video has been released that shows the doll speaking, in which she describes sex as'one of the most fascinating things in the world.' The bizarre doll, named Harmony 2.0 (pictured), talks in a Scottish accent, and can be programmed with 18 different personality traits, including'shy' and'sexual' The bizarre doll, named Harmony 2.0, talks in a Scottish accent, and can be programmed with 18 different personality traits, including'shy' and'sexual.' The doll also comes with a'persistent memory' allowing her to build up relationships with her owners.