It's updated perceptions, too (for many, synthetic speech still brings Stephen Hawking's voice to mind).īut it doesn't showcase the best of what modern text-to-speech has to offer. And with 1.4 billion views on #texttospeech alone, it's almost certainly raised awareness of the technology's benefits. TikTok's text-to-speech feature is no doubt impressive. Users can't really opt out of listening, either, as text-to-speech is played automatically if enabled by the creator. Nor is it having a huge impact on accessibility. Only small amounts of text appear on videos and the platform is highly visual anyway, so it isn't empowering users to escape their screen or multitask. Plus, the read-aloud feature offers limited benefits to TikTok viewers. When creators use a synthetic voice rather than their own, it reduces the human connection. Even if you ignore mispronunciations, their tone and inflections often sound very unnatural.Īll of this is especially problematic when you consider that TikTok is a social media network. TikTok's synthetic voices sound robotic, too. Not only is "Valspeak" highly stigmatized in the US, but its chirpy nature simply feels inappropriate with a lot of TikTok content.Īnd it doesn't help that this replaced a more liked voice - one that was removed because the voice artist said she never gave permission for her voice clone to be used. The North American text-to-speech voice has a "Valley Girl" speech pattern, which many consider to be annoying. They simply wouldn't work with the British-English text-to-speech voice. As on Scottish Twitter, lots of captions are written in regional dialect. NEW FEATURE ALERT! This is how you use Text-to-speech #learnontiktok #texttospeech #newfeaturetiktok #newfeature #blind ♬ Mood (feat. This can create a jarring effect for the listener, where the voice doesn't match up with the message. The lack of voice options is a problem, too.Ĭreators currently have access to just one (region-dependent) voice. It can't work out whether 'read' should be pronounced like 'red' or 'reed'.
'Drop the mic' comes out 'drop the mick'. Well, to start with, it's pretty common for TikTok's text-to-speech to get pronunciations wrong. So why do so many people hate on it? What makes TikTok voices so annoying? Source: Twitter It makes videos more accessible and eliminates the need to read. TikTok's text-to-speech feature lets creators add virtual voiceovers at the touch of a button.
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