Abstract: A system for emulating a subject, to allow a user to interact with a computer generated talking head with the subject's face and voice; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: An acoustic model is adapted, relating acoustic units to speech vectors. The acoustic model comprises a set of acoustic model parameters related to a given speech factor. The acoustic model parameters enable the acoustic model to output speech vectors with different values of the speech factor. The method comprises inputting a sample of speech which is corrupted by noise; determining values of the set of acoustic model parameters which enable the acoustic model to output speech with said first value of the speech factor; and employing said determined values of the set of speech factor parameters in said acoustic model. The acoustic model parameters are obtained by obtaining corrupted speech factor parameters using the sample of speech, and mapping the corrupted speech factor parameters to clean acoustic model parameters using noise characterization paramaters characterizing the noise.

Abstract: A system for emulating a subject, to allow a user to interact with a computer generated talking head with the subject's face and voice; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: A system for emulating a subject, to allow a user to interact with a computer generated talking head with the subject's face and voice; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: A method of animating a computer generation of a head, the head having a mouth which moves in accordance with speech to be output by the head, said method comprising: providing an input related to the speech which is to be output by the movement of the lips; dividing said input into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting expression characteristics for the inputted text; converting said sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of image vectors using a statistical model, wherein said model has a plurality of model parameters describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to an image vector, said image vector comprising a plurality of parameters which define a face of said head; and outputting said sequence of image vectors as video such that the mouth of said head moves to mime the speech associated with the input text with the selected expression, wherein a parameter of a predetermined type of each probability distribution in said selected expression is expressed as a weighted sum of pa

Abstract: A method of adapting an acoustic model relating acoustic units to speech vectors, wherein said acoustic model comprises a set of speech factor parameters related to a given speech factor and which enable the acoustic model to output speech vectors with different values of the speech factor, the method comprising: inputting a sample of speech with a first value of the speech factor; determining values of the set of speech factor parameters which enable the acoustic model to output speech with said first value of the speech factor; and employing said determined values of the set of speech factor parameters in said acoustic model, wherein said sample of speech is corrupted by noise, and wherein said step of determining the values of the set of speech factor parameters comprises: (i) obtaining noise characterization parameters characterising the noise; (ii) performing a speech factor parameter generation algorithm on the sample of speech, thereby generating corrupted values of the set of speech factor param

Abstract: A text-to-speech method for simulating a plurality of different voice characteristics includes dividing inputted text into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting voice characteristics for the inputted text; converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors using an acoustic model having a plurality of model parameters provided in clusters each having at least one sub-cluster and describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to a speech vector; and outputting the sequence of speech vectors as audio with the selected voice characteristics. A parameter of a predetermined type of each probability distribution is expressed as a weighted sum of parameters of the same type using voice characteristic dependent weighting. In converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors, the voice characteristic dependent weights for the selected voice characteristics are retrieved for each cluster such that there is one weight per sub-cluster.

Abstract: A method of animating a computer generation of a head and displaying the text of an electronic book, such that the head has a mouth which moves in accordance with the speech of the text of the electronic book to be output by the head and a word or group of words from the text is displayed while simultaneously being mimed by the mouth, wherein input text is divided into a sequence of acoustic units, which are converted to a sequence of image vectors and into a sequence of text display indicators. The sequence of image vectors is outputted as video such that the mouth of said head moves to mime the speech associated with the input text with a selected expression, and the sequence of text display indicators is output as video which is synchronized with the lip movement of the head.

Abstract: A text-to-speech method configured to output speech having a selected speaker voice and a selected speaker attribute, including: inputting text; dividing the inputted text into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting a speaker for the inputted text; selecting a speaker attribute for the inputted text; converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors using an acoustic model; and outputting the sequence of speech vectors as audio with the selected speaker voice and a selected speaker attribute. The acoustic model includes a first set of parameters relating to speaker voice and a second set of parameters relating to speaker attributes, which parameters do not overlap. The selecting a speaker voice includes selecting parameters from the first set of parameters and the selecting the speaker attribute includes selecting the parameters from the second set of parameters.

Abstract: A system for emulating a subject, to allow a user to interact with a computer generated talking head with the subject's face and voice; said system comprising a processor, a user interface and a personality storage section, the user interface being configured to emulate the subject, by displaying a talking head which comprises the subject's face and output speech from the mouth of the face with the subject's voice, the user interface further comprising a receiver for receiving a query from the user, the emulated subject being configured to respond to the query received from the user, the processor comprising a dialogue section and a talking head generation section, wherein said dialogue section is configured to generate a response to a query inputted by a user from the user interface and generate a response to be outputted by the talking head, the response being generated by retrieving information from said personality storage section, said personality storage section comprising content created by or about

Abstract: A method of animating a computer generation of a head and displaying the text of an electronic book, such that the head has a mouth which moves in accordance with the speech of the text of the electronic book to be output by the head and a word or group of words from the text is displayed while simultaneously being mimed by the mouth, said method comprising: inputting the text of said book; dividing said input text into a sequence of acoustic units; determining expression characteristics for the inputted text; calculating a duration for each acoustic unit using a duration model; converting said sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of image vectors using a statistical model, wherein said model has a plurality of model parameters describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to an image vector, said image vector comprising a plurality of parameters which define a face of said head; converting said sequence of acoustic units into a sequence of text display indicators using an text dis

Abstract: A method of animating a computer generation of a head, the head having a mouth which moves in accordance with speech to be output by the head, said method comprising: providing an input related to the speech which is to be output by the movement of the lips; dividing said input into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting expression characteristics for the inputted text; converting said sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of image vectors using a statistical model, wherein said model has a plurality of model parameters describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to an image vector, said image vector comprising a plurality of parameters which define a face of said head; and outputting said sequence of image vectors as video such that the mouth of said head moves to mime the speech associated with the input text with the selected expression, wherein a parameter of a predetermined type of each probability distribution in said selected expression is expressed as a weighted sum of pa

Abstract: A method of animating a computer generation of a head, the head having a mouth which moves in accordance with speech to be output by the head, said method comprising: providing an input related to the speech which is to be output by the movement of the mouth; dividing said input into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting an expression to be output by said head; converting said sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of image vectors using a statistical model, wherein said model has a plurality of model parameters describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to an image vector for a selected expression, said image vector comprising a plurality of parameters which define a face of said head; and outputting said sequence of image vectors as video such that the mouth of said head moves to mime the speech associated with the input text with the selected expression, wherein the image parameters define the face of a head using an appearance model comprising a plurality of shape modes and

Abstract: A text-to-speech method for simulating a plurality of different voice characteristics includes dividing inputted text into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting voice characteristics for the inputted text; converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors using an acoustic model having a plurality of model parameters provided in clusters each having at least one sub-cluster and describing probability distributions which relate an acoustic unit to a speech vector; and outputting the sequence of speech vectors as audio with the selected voice characteristics. A parameter of a predetermined type of each probability distribution is expressed as a weighted sum of parameters of the same type using voice characteristic dependent weighting. In converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors, the voice characteristic dependent weights for the selected voice characteristics are retrieved for each cluster such that there is one weight per sub-cluster.

Abstract: A text-to-speech method configured to output speech having a selected speaker voice and a selected speaker attribute, including: inputting text; dividing the inputted text into a sequence of acoustic units; selecting a speaker for the inputted text; selecting a speaker attribute for the inputted text; converting the sequence of acoustic units to a sequence of speech vectors using an acoustic model; and outputting the sequence of speech vectors as audio with the selected speaker voice and a selected speaker attribute. The acoustic model includes a first set of parameters relating to speaker voice and a second set of parameters relating to speaker attributes, which parameters do not overlap. The selecting a speaker voice includes selecting parameters from the first set of parameters and the selecting the speaker attribute includes selecting the parameters from the second set of parameters.