Apple Inc.

Nuance Communications, Inc.

David A Winarsky

Kevin M Stone

Assaf Baciu

Ladan Golipour

Sandeep M Bhojwani

Jayadev Billa

Hetal Pandya

Carl Mikael Berner

Qiong Hu

Jiangchuan Li

Ian M Richter

Tuomo J Raitio

Ramya Rasipuram

Cheng-Chieh Yeh

Weicheng Zhang

Kishore Sunkeswari Prahallad

Alistair D Conkie

William Beckman

Marcello Batea-Forte

Systems and processes for generating audio books from text are provided. An example process includes, at an electronic device having one or more processors and memory: receiving a text including at least a first subset and a second subset, wherein at least a portion of the first subset overlaps with at least a portion of the second subset; determining, based on the text, a prosody for a speech output, wherein the prosody is representative of a genre; determining a semantic meaning of the text; and generating, based on the prosody and the semantic meaning, the speech output of the text.

Generating genre appropriate voices for audio books

Various implementations disclosed herein include devices, systems, and methods for generating a response to a user focus indicator value based on a user comprehension value characterizing a user's association with the user focus indicator value. In some implementations, a method includes obtaining a user focus indicator value. A sequence of user voice inputs relating to the user focus indicator value is obtained. A user comprehension value characterizing an assessment of a user relative to the user focus indicator value is determined based on the user voice inputs. Based on a plurality of media content items that provide information about the user focus indicator value, a response to the user focus indicator value is synthesized that satisfies the user comprehension value. The response is outputted.

Conversational agent as learning aid

Systems and processes for operating an intelligent automated assistant are provided. In one example, a plurality of speech inputs is received from a first user. A voice model is obtained based on the plurality of speech inputs. A user input is received from the first user, the user input corresponding to a request to provide access to the voice model. The voice model is provided to a second electronic device.

Personalized voices for text messaging

Systems and processes for performing unit-selection text-to-speech synthesis are provided. In an example process, text to be converted to speech is received. The text is represented as a sequence of target units. A plurality of candidate speech segments corresponding to the sequence of target units are selected. Predicted statistical parameters of acoustic features associated with the sequence of target units are determined. The predicted statistical parameters of acoustic features are used to determine target costs and concatenation costs associated with the plurality of candidate speech segments. Based on a combined cost determined from the target costs and concatenation costs, a subset of candidate speech segments is selected from the plurality of candidate speech segments. Speech corresponding to the received text is generated using the subset of candidate speech segments.

Unit-selection text-to-speech synthesis based on predicted concatenation parameters

The present invention provides a system, method and software application for enabling a customer service agent to efficiently communicate with users of a communication device. When a user enters speech input into his communication device, the speech is converted to text, and the text is displayed to the customer service agent on the agent's computer screen. Alternately, the user's speech input is provided to the customer service agent in the form of an audio file. The agent types a response, and the agent's response is provided to the user on the user's communication device. The agent's response may be converted to speech and played to the user, and/or the agent's response may be displayed as text on the display screen of the user's communication device.

System, method and software program for enabling communications between customer service agents and users of communication devices

A system, method and software application track call failures on a wireless phone. A software application on the phone monitors outbound calls made on the phone to determine whether or not a call fails. In one embodiment, such monitoring is done only for a select period of time (e.g., the initial few seconds when the phone is attempting to connect to a call to the wireless communication carrier's network), and, in an alternate embodiment, such monitoring is done for the duration of the call. If a call fails, the software application stores information related to the call. Examples of such types of information include the time the call failed, the location of the phone at call failure, and identification information for the phone. The stored call information is then sent to the wireless communication carrier to enable the carrier to assess network quality.

System, method, and software program product for tracking call failures on a wireless phone

The present invention provides a system, method and software application for associating one or more phone numbers with an action on a phone and performing an action on the phone in response to the user initiating a call to one of such phone numbers. Certain phone numbers are associated with an action. The user's phone, or a server with which the user's phone communicates, maintains a table of the phone numbers associated with an action, and each phone number in the table is related to an action. Software on the user's phone listens for call initiated by a user. When the user initiates a call, software on the phone 'intercepts' the call, and the phone (or a server with which the phone communicates) determines whether the call is to a phone number that is in the table. If the phone number is in the table, then it is associated with an action, and the user's phone performs that action at a time specified by instructions for such action. The action may be performed before, during, or after the call depending on the instructions associated with the call. Whether a call is placed to the original phone number ultimately depends on the action and the user's response to the action.

System and method for performing an action on a phone in response to a user initiating an outbound call to one or more select phone numbers

Growing community of inventors

Cupertino, CA, United States of America

David A Winarsky