I’ve been sitting in the Phoenix airport for almost two hours now listening to their synthesized-voice announcements over and over again and I am thoroughly sick of this speech synthesis technology. The intonation is wrong on much of what it says, similar to what one would expect from someone reading English text when they are not too familiar with the language.
I keep expecting one of the announcements to begin with, “Hello, my name a Borat,” and end with, “Iaye liiike.” The phrase “removed your carry-ons,” in a message that repeats every ten minutes, has the prosody of a five-year old rapping to polka music.
The apparent lack of interest in using a system that sounds more human-like is as disturbing as the speech itself. I suppose that I am more sensitive to such things than other people given my interests in speech&hearing, but I wonder if Bobby Johnston noticed the announcement asking “Bob Eee Johns Ton” to meet his party at baggage claim.
I am reminded of American Express’s recent change of their automated phone system in using a voice that sounds like a young Valley Girl. Is this really what AmEx customers want to hear when they call about a financial inquiry? I appreciate that automatic speech (synthesis) systems provide efficiency and cost-savings, but they do so at the additional potential cost of annoyed listeners.
(For those of you still scratching your heads on the meaning of this post's title, read it out loud. Then compare what you just said with "removed your carry-ons" :)