Amazon Technologies, Inc.

Marco Nicolis

Adam Franciszek Nadolski

Remus Razvan Mois

Thomas Edward Merritt

Roberto Barra Chicote

Bartosz Putrycz

Rafal Kuklinski

Daniel Korzekwa

Wiktor Dolecki

Systems and methods for generating output audio with emphasized portions are described. Spoken audio is obtained and undergoes speech processing (e.g., ASR and optionally NLU) to create text. It may be determined that the resulting text includes a portion that should be emphasized (e.g., an interjection) using at least one of knowledge of an application run on a device that captured the spoken audio, prosodic analysis, and/or linguistic analysis. The portion of text to be emphasized may be tagged (e.g., using a Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) tag). TTS processing is then performed on the tagged text to create output audio including an emphasized portion corresponding to the tagged portion of the text.

Text-to-speech processing with emphasized output audio

During text-to-speech processing, audio data corresponding to a word part, word, or group of words is generated using a trained model and used by a unit selection engine to create output audio. The audio data is generated at least when an input word is unrecognized or when a cost of a unit selection is too high.

Text-to-speech (TTS) processing

Methods and devices for generating unique and different responses to commands are described herein. Natural language generation techniques may be employed to formulate responses to commands that are tailored to particular users. These responses account for previously provided responses, previously commands that have been made, and/or geographic locations of the requesting individual, for example. In some embodiments, an audible command may be received by a backend system from a voice activated electronic device. Text data may be generated from the audible command, and a user intent of the command is determined. Based on the user intent, a response from a particular application may be obtained. The response may be compared with previously generated responses and, if a similar responses was determined to have been provided previously, one or more different words, or a different arrangement of words, may be used to generate a new response.

Systems and methods for providing natural responses to commands

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Gdansk, Poland

Marco Nicolis