GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis VS common-voice

If you want you can use Google's TTS service without Web Speech API with a proxy, see GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis. I made a feature request for Google to release the source code as FOSS Re: Issue 263510047: Release TTS and STT source code and Google voices as FOSS so we don't have to make external requests just to use Web Speech API.

I requested to Google to Release TTS and STT source code and Google voices as FOSS which you can request over the network here GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis. Those are the voices Google Chrome uses for Web Speech API. Feel free to chime on the feature request in in support of Google releasing the source code of its network-based cloud service (that google uses for Web Speech API implementation) TTS and SST code as FOSS.

Technically you can use Google API key shipped in the browser see guest271314/ GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis . No need to sign up for a Google account to use this. I don't think Google's TTS is related to "AI".

This is how you can make the request yourself GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis.

If anybody want to build a TTS "module" or "component" that accepts and processes SSML input, and that the user can control - to an appreciable degree - on the front-end you can play around with this https://github.com/guest271314/GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis. (Makes an external request). Have fun!

It is possible to use Google Network Speech Synthesis service "free of charge", see GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis. On Chrome if you use Google voices with SpeechSynthesisUtterance() and window.speechSynthesis.speak() you are doing that anyway.

I implemented SSML parsing in JavaScript by hand for Web Speech API per SSML specification https://github.com/guest271314/SSMLParser, where the Web Speech API nor Firefox nor Chrome or Chromium browsers (Google does implement SSML parsing as a service https://github.com/guest271314/GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis) have implemented SSML parsing.

FYI when Google voices are used on Chrome or Chromium-based browsers the browser also makes a remote request, see https://github.com/guest271314/GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis.

How is processing SSML an attack vector? Google provides that capability as a service - with embedded limitations on character input that are not specified. This can and should be implemented in the browser - without making an external request; native-messaging-espeak-ng, GoogleNetworkSpeechSynthesis.

Mozillas Common Voice Project (https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/) is creating an open dataset for many minority languages to make it easier to support them in STT systems. If you speak one of these languages please consider donating a few minutes of your voice.

> it was not at all obvious to me there was some way of speeding up getting a language in the first place.

Yeah, that's the biggest failing of Common Voice in my opinion. Getting a new language up to speed could be much improved by simply adding a few links to documentation, but even the existing links are broken, which I reported in March 2022... https://github.com/common-voice/common-voice/issues/3637

> I have no interest in wasting time contributing to a UI translation I actively don't want to be subjected to

Translating the UI may still help you get other people to record, even if you don't want to use it yourself.

> I'll see if I can submit some sentences at least

If you want to go faster, there's also a project to extract sentences from Wikipedia etc. in small doses Mozilla's lawyers and Wikimedia's lawyers have agreed are fair use. I think you'd only need to define how Norwegian Bokmål separates sentences. (E.g. after a period but not if it's a common abbreviation like "etc." in the preceding sentence.)

There is a lot of TTS and SST development going on (https://github.com/mozilla/TTS; https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech; https://github.com/common-voice/common-voice). That is the only way they work: Contributions from the wild.

Since you're interested in STT and TTS, let me just plug in Mozilla's Common Voice, a way for everyone to contribute to an open source data set for STT. You can record yourself or verify other people's recordings!

[커먼보이스 전자우편](mailto:[email protected]) || Common Voice || Korean Language Homepage || FAQs || Speaking Aloud and Reviewing Recordings || Sentence Collector || NVidia/NeMo

How can it be used for transcription?

In their website I only see an interface for either uploading audio or submitting transcriptions:

https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/es

The Github repo they mention (https://github.com/common-voice/common-voice) seems to be just that sample collection software. I do not see where I can download the software to transcribe audio.

A practical example: in the speech community, getting good results on datasets such as TIMITwould not be revolutionary, since it's super small and very old. On the contrary, things like Common Voice (which is constantly crowd-sourced) would be much more impactful. Just my two cents :)