25 Jul Cere­Proc has launched the world’s first com­mer­cial­ly avail­able Irish lan­guage syn­thet­ic voice

Grass­roots Radio part­ner Cere­Proc has launched the world’s first com­mer­cial­ly avail­able Irish lan­guage syn­thet­ic voice as part of the Grass­roots Radio project.

CereProc’s Text-to-Speech tech­nol­o­gy will be used by a com­mu­ni­ty radio sta­tion on Bere Island in south-west Cork to gen­er­ate spo­ken con­tent when the sta­tion can­not be staffed by pre­sen­ters, enabling the com­mu­ni­ty to main­tain a local radio sta­tion with rel­e­vant news sup­port­ing both Eng­lish with an Irish accent, and the Irish lan­guage.

“Exist­ing dig­i­tal voic­es such as Alexa or Siri are dull and all very sim­i­lar,” says Dr Matthew Aylett, Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer at Cere­Proc. “They are lim­it­ed to gener­ic accents and regions. It’s time for tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port diver­si­ty rather than encour­age con­for­mi­ty. Com­pa­nies and indi­vid­u­als now have access to a range of per­son­alised, human-like voic­es that have char­ac­ter and express emo­tion in region­al accents and less resourced lan­guages. The Irish lan­guage is key to Irish iden­ti­ty and our voice can be used in tan­dem with our Irish-accent­ed Eng­lish lan­guage voice to cre­ate a more per­son­alised expe­ri­ence for the Irish mar­ket and beyond.”

Besides Irish, CereProc’s Text-to-Speech tech­nol­o­gy will be used to repro­duce the lan­guages of the oth­er two coun­tries involved in Grass­roots Radio: Roma­nia and Por­tu­gal.