Speech synthesis with robustness against input variation

Abstract

A speech synthesis system may be configured to be robust against variations and errors in spelling and/or punctuation in the input text. A text modifier may generate a parallel training dataset by modifying text from a training dataset to include variations in spelling, punctuation, and/or formatting. The speech synthesis system may generate synthesized speech based on the modified text in the parallel training dataset. A robustness tester may compare audio from the original training dataset with synthesized speech generated using the modified text. The results may be used to update parameters of one or more speech generation models of the speech synthesis system. The results may also be used to adjust the frequency of modifications generated by the text modifier to, for example, ensure that performance of the speech synthesis system on unmodified text is not adversely affected by the training using the modified text.