Have you tried chatgpt's text-to-speech feature?
It’s so much better than anything that I tried before. You can even choose different "personalities" or tones or whatever.

I‘d even say that it‘s perfect. I can’t think of anything that could be improved in terms of how well it pronounces words and puts emphasis on specific words. It’s 100% natural sounding.

We tried but the used elevenlabs for that.

@retoor I think the main target of "AI friends" will be the lonely introverts than extroverts. There is real loneliness epidemic going on and a lot of (younger) people crave social contact or something that looks like it.

@wojtek322 Something that apparently lead to the emergence of the 'Professional Cuddler' job.

Apparently that's a thing.

https://cuddle-professionals.co.uk/...

WTF?

I am reminded of the 'Big Bang Theory' episode in which Leonard is reminiscing about him as a child building a robot for hugs.

I don't like natural bot speech cuz I can't tell it's a robot and that creeps me out...

to be fair my standard for humans to sound human is pretty low. a lot of people "talk like bots" I guess and I didn't want to judge them before, but I guess now I feel uncomfortable about having viewed them as human when they spoke so "perfectly" and also soullessly...

@D-4got10-01 "Leonard is reminiscing about him as a child building a robot for hugs."

I didn't think a single sentence could rip a mans heart right out, but here it is.

Orpheus just released and from looking over the demo and examples it has very believable emotional intonations.

Also had a few monologues with natural speech models that were remarkably believable.

One was so striking, the familiarity of it nagged the fuck out of me. Then I placed it. It was almost the exact same experience I had while watching Her, even a similar voice and personality.

She even ordered a hooker for me.

And I was just like, bitch, how the fuck did you get my credit card?

@Demolishun our application doesn’t need emotions 😛

@Wisecrack It was a good episode. He mentioned that his dad used to borrow that robot.

...which says a lot about the mother.