System and method for creating voice profiles for specific demographics

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9633649-B2
Application number	US-201414268484-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 2, 2014
Priority date	May 2, 2014
Publication date	Apr 25, 2017
Grant date	Apr 25, 2017

Abstract

Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage devices for receiving an utterance from a user and analyzing the utterance to identify the demographics of the user. The system then analyzes the utterance to determine the prosody of the utterance, and retrieves from the Internet data associated with the determined demographics. Using the retrieved data, the system retrieves, also from the Internet, recorded speech matching the identified prosody. The recorded speech, which is based on the demographic data of the utterance and has a prosody matching the utterance, is then saved to a database for future use in generating speech specific to the user.

First claim

We claim:

1. A method comprising:
receiving an utterance from a user;
analyzing, via a processor, the utterance to identify a demographic of the user and a prosody of the utterance;
retrieving, from a first remote database, data associated with the demographic of the user;
retrieving, from a second remote database, recorded speech matching the prosody of the utterance and associated with the data;
saving the data and the recorded speech in a local database; and
generating speech using the data and the recorded speech stored in the local database.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the prosody of the utterance comprises an accent, a pitch, a rate, and an energy of the utterance.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the demographic of the user comprises one of an age, a gender, an ethnicity, an education level, and an economic status.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the demographic of the user comprises a geographic location.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the geographic location is a school.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the data retrieved from the first remote database is retrieved from one of a blog, a social media website, and a book.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the recorded speech is extracted from video.

8. A system comprising:
a processor; and
a computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
receiving an utterance from a user;
analyzing the utterance to identify a demographic of the user and a prosody of the utterance;
retrieving, from a first remote database, data associated with the demographic of the user;
retrieving, from a second remote database, recorded speech matching the prosody of the utterance and associated with the data;
saving the data and the recorded speech in a local database; and
generating speech using the data and the recorded speech stored in the local database.

9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the prosody of the utterance comprises an accent, a pitch, a rate, and an energy of the utterance.

10. The system of claim 8 , wherein the demographic of the user comprises one of an age, a gender, an ethnicity, an education level, and an economic status.

11. The system of claim 8 , wherein the demographic of the user comprises a geographic location.

12. The system of claim 11 , wherein the geographic location is a school.

13. The system of claim 8 , wherein the data retrieved from the first remote database is retrieved from one of a blog, a social media website, and a book.

14. The system of claim 8 , wherein the recorded speech is extracted from video.

15. A computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:
receiving an utterance from a user;
analyzing the utterance to identify a demographic of the user and a prosody of the utterance;
retrieving, from a first remote database, data associated with the demographic of the user;
retrieving, from a second remote database, recorded speech matching the prosody of the utterance and associated with the data;
saving the data and the recorded speech in a local database; and
generating speech using the data and the recorded speech stored in the local database.

16. The computer-readable storage device of claim 15 , wherein the prosody of the utterance comprises an accent, a pitch, a rate, and an energy of the utterance.

17. The computer-readable storage device of claim 15 , wherein the demographic of the user comprises one of an age, a gender, an ethnicity, an education level, and an economic status.

Assignees

• At & T Ip I Lp

Inventors

• Bangalore Srinivas
• Mishra Taniya

Classifications

• G10L15/1807

  using prosody or stress · CPC title

• G10L17/26

  Recognition of special voice characteristics, e.g. for use in lie detectors; Recognition of animal voices · CPC title

• G10L13/033 Primary

  Voice editing, e.g. manipulating the voice of the synthesiser · CPC title

• G10L25/48

  specially adapted for particular use · CPC title

• G10L15/06

  Creation of reference templates; Training of speech recognition systems, e.g. adaptation to the characteristics of the speaker's voice (G10L15/14 takes precedence) · CPC title