Roger Ebert Speaks in "Real" Voice
This is just awesome. Footage from Roger Ebert's interview with (ex-girlfriend!) Oprah Winfrey is leaking to the internet, and it's pretty heartwarming and a little bittersweet. In this clip, Ebert speaks in his "own" voice for the first time since 2006.
Ebert lost his voice to multiple cancer surgeries a few years ago. Since then, he's been speaking with one of the stock Mac OS text-to-speech voices. But scientists have developed a new way for him to talk by digitizing words and even individual syllables of his own voice from his hours and hours of television appearances.
The result? A pretty good computer-generated approximation of Roger Ebert's own voice. It's amazing from a technological perspective, but more importantly, it's incredibly touching.
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