Patents by Inventor Ron J. Weiss

Ron J. Weiss has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 12175963
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for speech synthesis. The methods, systems, and apparatus include actions of obtaining an audio representation of speech of a target speaker, obtaining input text for which speech is to be synthesized in a voice of the target speaker, generating a speaker vector by providing the audio representation to a speaker encoder engine that is trained to distinguish speakers from one another, generating an audio representation of the input text spoken in the voice of the target speaker by providing the input text and the speaker vector to a spectrogram generation engine that is trained using voices of reference speakers to generate audio representations, and providing the audio representation of the input text spoken in the voice of the target speaker for output.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 30, 2023
    Date of Patent: December 24, 2024
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Ye Jia, Zhifeng Chen, Yonghui Wu, Jonathan Shen, Ruoming Pang, Ron J. Weiss, Ignacio Lopez Moreno, Fei Ren, Yu Zhang, Quan Wang, Patrick An Phu Nguyen
  • Publication number: 20240420686
    Abstract: A method for performing speech recognition using sequence-to-sequence models includes receiving audio data for an utterance and providing features indicative of acoustic characteristics of the utterance as input to an encoder. The method also includes processing an output of the encoder using an attender to generate a context vector, generating speech recognition scores using the context vector and a decoder trained using a training process, and generating a transcription for the utterance using word elements selected based on the speech recognition scores. The transcription is provided as an output of the ASR system.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 26, 2024
    Publication date: December 19, 2024
    Applicant: Google LLC
    Inventors: Rohit Prakash Prabhavalkar, Zhifeng Chen, Bo Li, Chung-Cheng Chiu, Kanury Kanishka Rao, Yonghui Wu, Ron J. Weiss, Navdeep Jaitly, Michiel A. U. Bacchiani, Tara N. Sainath, Jan Kazimierz Chorowski, Anjuli Patricia Kannan, Ekaterina Gonina, Patrick An Phu Nguyen
  • Publication number: 20240404506
    Abstract: A method includes receiving an input text sequence to be synthesized into speech in a first language and obtaining a speaker embedding, the speaker embedding specifying specific voice characteristics of a target speaker for synthesizing the input text sequence into speech that clones a voice of the target speaker. The target speaker includes a native speaker of a second language different than the first language. The method also includes generating, using a text-to-speech (TTS) model, an output audio feature representation of the input text by processing the input text sequence and the speaker embedding. The output audio feature representation includes the voice characteristics of the target speaker specified by the speaker embedding.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 8, 2024
    Publication date: December 5, 2024
    Applicant: Google LLC
    Inventors: Yu Zhang, Ron J. Weiss, Byungha Chun, Yonghui Wu, Zhifeng Chen, Russell John Wyatt Skerry-Ryan, Ye Jia, Andrew M. Rosenberg, Bhuvana Ramabhadran
  • Patent number: 12148444
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer program products for generating, from an input character sequence, an output sequence of audio data representing the input character sequence. The output sequence of audio data includes a respective audio output sample for each of a number of time steps. One example method includes, for each of the time steps: generating a mel-frequency spectrogram for the time step by processing a representation of a respective portion of the input character sequence using a decoder neural network; generating a probability distribution over a plurality of possible audio output samples for the time step by processing the mel-frequency spectrogram for the time step using a vocoder neural network; and selecting the audio output sample for the time step from the possible audio output samples in accordance with the probability distribution.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 5, 2021
    Date of Patent: November 19, 2024
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Yonghui Wu, Jonathan Shen, Ruoming Pang, Ron J. Weiss, Michael Schuster, Navdeep Jaitly, Zongheng Yang, Zhifeng Chen, Yu Zhang, Yuxuan Wang, Russell John Wyatt Skerry-Ryan, Ryan M. Rifkin, Ioannis Agiomyrgiannakis
  • Patent number: 12106749
    Abstract: A method for performing speech recognition using sequence-to-sequence models includes receiving audio data for an utterance and providing features indicative of acoustic characteristics of the utterance as input to an encoder. The method also includes processing an output of the encoder using an attender to generate a context vector, generating speech recognition scores using the context vector and a decoder trained using a training process, and generating a transcription for the utterance using word elements selected based on the speech recognition scores. The transcription is provided as an output of the ASR system.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 20, 2021
    Date of Patent: October 1, 2024
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Rohit Prakash Prabhavalkar, Zhifeng Chen, Bo Li, Chung-cheng Chiu, Kanury Kanishka Rao, Yonghui Wu, Ron J. Weiss, Navdeep Jaitly, Michiel A. u. Bacchiani, Tara N. Sainath, Jan Kazimierz Chorowski, Anjuli Patricia Kannan, Ekaterina Gonina, Patrick An Phu Nguyen
  • Patent number: 12087273
    Abstract: A method includes receiving an input text sequence to be synthesized into speech in a first language and obtaining a speaker embedding, the speaker embedding specifying specific voice characteristics of a target speaker for synthesizing the input text sequence into speech that clones a voice of the target speaker. The target speaker includes a native speaker of a second language different than the first language. The method also includes generating, using a text-to-speech (TTS) model, an output audio feature representation of the input text by processing the input text sequence and the speaker embedding. The output audio feature representation includes the voice characteristics of the target speaker specified by the speaker embedding.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 30, 2023
    Date of Patent: September 10, 2024
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Yu Zhang, Ron J. Weiss, Byungha Chun, Yonghui Wu, Zhifeng Chen, Russell John Wyatt Skerry-Ryan, Ye Jia, Andrew M. Rosenberg, Bhuvana Ramabhadran
  • Publication number: 20240161732
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer-readable media, for speech recognition using multi-dialect and multilingual models. In some implementations, audio data indicating audio characteristics of an utterance is received. Input features determined based on the audio data are provided to a speech recognition model that has been trained to output score indicating the likelihood of linguistic units for each of multiple different language or dialects. The speech recognition model can be one that has been trained using cluster adaptive training. Output that the speech recognition model generated in response to receiving the input features determined based on the audio data is received. A transcription of the utterance generated based on the output of the speech recognition model is provided.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 20, 2024
    Publication date: May 16, 2024
    Applicant: Google LLC
    Inventors: Zhifeng Chen, Bo Li, Eugene Weinstein, Yonghui Wu, Pedro J. Moreno Mengibar, Ron J. Weiss, Khe Chai Sim, Tara N. Sainath, Patrick An Phu Nguyen
  • Publication number: 20240161730
    Abstract: A method for training a non-autoregressive TTS model includes receiving training data that includes a reference audio signal and a corresponding input text sequence. The method also includes encoding the reference audio signal into a variational embedding that disentangles the style/prosody information from the reference audio signal and encoding the input text sequence into an encoded text sequence. The method also includes predicting a phoneme duration for each phoneme in the input text sequence and determining a phoneme duration loss based on the predicted phoneme durations and a reference phoneme duration. The method also includes generating one or more predicted mel-frequency spectrogram sequences for the input text sequence and determining a final spectrogram loss based on the predicted mel-frequency spectrogram sequences and a reference mel-frequency spectrogram sequence. The method also includes training the TTS model based on the final spectrogram loss and the corresponding phoneme duration loss.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 24, 2024
    Publication date: May 16, 2024
    Applicant: Google LLC
    Inventors: Isaac Elias, Jonathan Shen, Yu Zhang, Ye Jia, Ron J. Weiss, Yonghui Wu, Byungha Chun
  • Publication number: 20240127791
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for generating speech from text. One of the systems includes one or more computers and one or more storage devices storing instructions that when executed by one or more computers cause the one or more computers to implement: a sequence-to-sequence recurrent neural network configured to: receive a sequence of characters in a particular natural language, and process the sequence of characters to generate a spectrogram of a verbal utterance of the sequence of characters in the particular natural language; and a subsystem configured to: receive the sequence of characters in the particular natural language, and provide the sequence of characters as input to the sequence-to-sequence recurrent neural network to obtain as output the spectrogram of the verbal utterance of the sequence of characters in the particular natural language.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 21, 2023
    Publication date: April 18, 2024
    Inventors: Samuel Bengio, Yuxuan Wang, Zongheng Yang, Zhifeng Chen, Yonghui Wu, Ioannis Agiomyrgiannakis, Ron J. Weiss, Navdeep Jaitly, Ryan M. Rifkin, Robert Andrew James Clark, Quoc V. Le, Russell J. Ryan, Ying Xiao
  • Publication number: 20240112667
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for speech synthesis. The methods, systems, and apparatus include actions of obtaining an audio representation of speech of a target speaker, obtaining input text for which speech is to be synthesized in a voice of the target speaker, generating a speaker vector by providing the audio representation to a speaker encoder engine that is trained to distinguish speakers from one another, generating an audio representation of the input text spoken in the voice of the target speaker by providing the input text and the speaker vector to a spectrogram generation engine that is trained using voices of reference speakers to generate audio representations, and providing the audio representation of the input text spoken in the voice of the target speaker for output.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 30, 2023
    Publication date: April 4, 2024
    Applicant: Google LLC
    Inventors: Ye Jia, Zhifeng Chen, Yonghui Wu, Jonathan Shen, Ruoming Pang, Ron J. Weiss, Ignacio Lopez Moreno, Fei Ren, Yu Zhang, Quan Wang, Patrick An Phu Nguyen
  • Patent number: 11908448
    Abstract: A method for training a non-autoregressive TTS model includes receiving training data that includes a reference audio signal and a corresponding input text sequence. The method also includes encoding the reference audio signal into a variational embedding that disentangles the style/prosody information from the reference audio signal and encoding the input text sequence into an encoded text sequence. The method also includes predicting a phoneme duration for each phoneme in the input text sequence and determining a phoneme duration loss based on the predicted phoneme durations and a reference phoneme duration. The method also includes generating one or more predicted mel-frequency spectrogram sequences for the input text sequence and determining a final spectrogram loss based on the predicted mel-frequency spectrogram sequences and a reference mel-frequency spectrogram sequence. The method also includes training the TTS model based on the final spectrogram loss and the corresponding phoneme duration loss.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 21, 2021
    Date of Patent: February 20, 2024
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Isaac Elias, Jonathan Shen, Yu Zhang, Ye Jia, Ron J. Weiss, Yonghui Wu, Byungha Chun
  • Patent number: 11900915
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer-readable media, for speech recognition using multi-dialect and multilingual models. In some implementations, audio data indicating audio characteristics of an utterance is received. Input features determined based on the audio data are provided to a speech recognition model that has been trained to output score indicating the likelihood of linguistic units for each of multiple different language or dialects. The speech recognition model can be one that has been trained using cluster adaptive training. Output that the speech recognition model generated in response to receiving the input features determined based on the audio data is received. A transcription of the utterance generated based on the output of the speech recognition model is provided.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 10, 2022
    Date of Patent: February 13, 2024
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Zhifeng Chen, Bo Li, Eugene Weinstein, Yonghui Wu, Pedro J. Moreno Mengibar, Ron J. Weiss, Khe Chai Sim, Tara N. Sainath, Patrick An Phu Nguyen
  • Patent number: 11862142
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for generating speech from text. One of the systems includes one or more computers and one or more storage devices storing instructions that when executed by one or more computers cause the one or more computers to implement: a sequence-to-sequence recurrent neural network configured to: receive a sequence of characters in a particular natural language, and process the sequence of characters to generate a spectrogram of a verbal utterance of the sequence of characters in the particular natural language; and a subsystem configured to: receive the sequence of characters in the particular natural language, and provide the sequence of characters as input to the sequence-to-sequence recurrent neural network to obtain as output the spectrogram of the verbal utterance of the sequence of characters in the particular natural language.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 2, 2021
    Date of Patent: January 2, 2024
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Samuel Bengio, Yuxuan Wang, Zongheng Yang, Zhifeng Chen, Yonghui Wu, Ioannis Agiomyrgiannakis, Ron J. Weiss, Navdeep Jaitly, Ryan M. Rifkin, Robert Andrew James Clark, Quoc V. Le, Russell J. Ryan, Ying Xiao
  • Patent number: 11848002
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for speech synthesis. The methods, systems, and apparatus include actions of obtaining an audio representation of speech of a target speaker, obtaining input text for which speech is to be synthesized in a voice of the target speaker, generating a speaker vector by providing the audio representation to a speaker encoder engine that is trained to distinguish speakers from one another, generating an audio representation of the input text spoken in the voice of the target speaker by providing the input text and the speaker vector to a spectrogram generation engine that is trained using voices of reference speakers to generate audio representations, and providing the audio representation of the input text spoken in the voice of the target speaker for output.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 19, 2022
    Date of Patent: December 19, 2023
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Ye Jia, Zhifeng Chen, Yonghui Wu, Jonathan Shen, Ruoming Pang, Ron J. Weiss, Ignacio Lopez Moreno, Fei Ren, Yu Zhang, Quan Wang, Patrick An Phu Nguyen
  • Publication number: 20230325658
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for generating outputs conditioned on network inputs using neural networks. In one aspect, a method comprises obtaining the network input; initializing a current network output; and generating the final network output by updating the current network output at each of a plurality of iterations, wherein each iteration corresponds to a respective noise level, and wherein the updating comprises, at each iteration: processing a model input for the iteration comprising (i) the current network output and (ii) the network input using a noise estimation neural network that is configured to process the model input to generate a noise output, wherein the noise output comprises a respective noise estimate for each value in the current network output; and updating the current network output using the noise estimate and the noise level for the iteration.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 2, 2021
    Publication date: October 12, 2023
    Inventors: Nanxin Chen, Byungha Chun, William Chan, Ron J. Weiss, Mohammad Norouzi, Yu Zhang, Yonghui Wu
  • Patent number: 11783849
    Abstract: This specification describes computer-implemented methods and systems. One method includes receiving, by a neural network of a speech recognition system, first data representing a first raw audio signal and second data representing a second raw audio signal. The first raw audio signal and the second raw audio signal describe audio occurring at a same period of time. The method further includes generating, by a spatial filtering layer of the neural network, a spatial filtered output using the first data and the second data, and generating, by a spectral filtering layer of the neural network, a spectral filtered output using the spatial filtered output. Generating the spectral filtered output comprises processing frequency-domain data representing the spatial filtered output. The method still further includes processing, by one or more additional layers of the neural network, the spectral filtered output to predict sub-word units encoded in both the first raw audio signal and the second raw audio signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 8, 2021
    Date of Patent: October 10, 2023
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Ehsan Variani, Kevin William Wilson, Ron J. Weiss, Tara N. Sainath, Arun Narayanan
  • Publication number: 20230252974
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for generating waveforms conditioned on phoneme sequences. In one aspect, a method comprises: obtaining a phoneme sequence; processing the phoneme sequence using an encoder neural network to generate a hidden representation of the phoneme sequence; generating, from the hidden representation, a conditioning input; initializing a current waveform output; and generating a final waveform output that defines an utterance of the phoneme sequence by a speaker by updating the current waveform output at each of a plurality of iterations, wherein each iteration corresponds to a respective noise level, and wherein the updating comprises, at each iteration: processing (i) the current waveform output and (ii) the conditioning input using a noise estimation neural network to generate a noise output; and updating the current waveform output using the noise output and the noise level for the iteration.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 2, 2021
    Publication date: August 10, 2023
    Inventors: Byungha Chun, Mohammad Norouzi, Nanxin Chen, Ron J. Weiss, William Chan, Yu Zhang, Yonghui Wu
  • Publication number: 20230230572
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for end to end speech conversion are disclosed. In one aspect, a method includes the actions of receiving first audio data of a first utterance of one or more first terms spoken by a user. The actions further include providing the first audio data as an input to a model that is configured to receive first given audio data in a first voice and output second given audio data in a synthesized voice without performing speech recognition on the first given audio data. The actions further include receiving second audio data of a second utterance of the one or more first terms spoken in the synthesized voice. The actions further include providing, for output, the second audio data of the second utterance of the one or more first terms spoken in the synthesized voice.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 23, 2023
    Publication date: July 20, 2023
    Applicant: Google LLC
    Inventors: Fadi Biadsy, Ron J. Weiss, Aleksandar Kracun, Pedro J. Moreno Mengibar
  • Publication number: 20230178068
    Abstract: A method includes receiving an input text sequence to be synthesized into speech in a first language and obtaining a speaker embedding, the speaker embedding specifying specific voice characteristics of a target speaker for synthesizing the input text sequence into speech that clones a voice of the target speaker. The target speaker includes a native speaker of a second language different than the first language. The method also includes generating, using a text-to-speech (TTS) model, an output audio feature representation of the input text by processing the input text sequence and the speaker embedding. The output audio feature representation includes the voice characteristics of the target speaker specified by the speaker embedding.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 30, 2023
    Publication date: June 8, 2023
    Applicant: Google LLC
    Inventors: Yu Zhang, Ron J. Weiss, Byungha Chun, Yonghui Wu, Zhifeng Chen, Russell John Wyatt Skerry-Ryan, Ye Jia, Andrew M. Rosenberg, Bhuvana Ramabhadran
  • Patent number: 11580952
    Abstract: A method includes receiving an input text sequence to be synthesized into speech in a first language and obtaining a speaker embedding, the speaker embedding specifying specific voice characteristics of a target speaker for synthesizing the input text sequence into speech that clones a voice of the target speaker. The target speaker includes a native speaker of a second language different than the first language. The method also includes generating, using a text-to-speech (TTS) model, an output audio feature representation of the input text by processing the input text sequence and the speaker embedding. The output audio feature representation includes the voice characteristics of the target speaker specified by the speaker embedding.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 22, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 14, 2023
    Assignee: Google LLC
    Inventors: Yu Zhang, Ron J. Weiss, Byungha Chun, Yonghui Wu, Zhifeng Chen, Russell John Wyatt Skerry-Ryan, Ye Jia, Andrew M. Rosenberg, Bhuvana Ramabhadran