Project Revoice have announced plans to develop a new voice banking service, advising it will take just two to three hours of recordings for the creation of the digital voice clone. Project Revoice was funded through the Ice Bucket Challenge and is a collaboration between Lyrebird in Canada, Finch and Rumble Studios in Sydney and the ALS Association in the USA. Voice banking uses a digital recording of a person's voice which is provided to a commercial provider who then artificially creates a voice file, that is not the person's actual voice, but a similar, synthesised voice that has a much wider vocabulary than originally recorded. If, later in motor neurone disease progression,
the person decides to use a device or app as a speech generating device, they can use these audio files if they are compatible with their selected speech generating device.
The opportunity to 'bank your voice' will not become available through Project Revoice until mid-2018, with voice cloning to commence at the end of 2018. You can find out more information about the project, including registering your interest in future updates, at www.projectrevoice.org and on the website of their technology partner Lyrebird at www.lyrebird.ai.
Other commercial voice banking services/apps already available include CereVoice Me, ModelTalker, VocaliD and My-own-voice with prices ranging from $100 to $4,500. It usually takes from five to seven hours for the user to make the necessary recordings over several sessions, using a headset with microphone connected to a recording device such as a smart phone, tablet or desktop computer.