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Prosody-controllable gender-ambiguous speech synthesis: a tool for investigating implicit bias in speech perception
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Intelligent systems, Speech, Music and Hearing, TMH.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1175-840X
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Intelligent systems, Speech, Music and Hearing, TMH.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0397-6442
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Intelligent systems, Robotics, Perception and Learning, RPL.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-8601-1370
2023 (English)In: Interspeech 2023, International Speech Communication Association , 2023, p. 1234-1238Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

This paper proposes a novel method to develop gender-ambiguous TTS, which can be used to investigate hidden gender bias in speech perception. Our aim is to provide a tool for researchers to conduct experiments on language use associated with specific genders. Ambiguous voices can also be beneficial for virtual assistants, to help reduce stereotypes and increase acceptance. Our approach uses a multi-speaker embedding in a neural TTS engine, combining two corpora recorded by a male and a female speaker to achieve a gender-ambiguous timbre. We also propose speaker-disentangled prosody control to ensure that the timbre is robust across a range of prosodies and enable more expressive speech. We optimised the output using an SSL-based network trained on hundreds of speakers. We conducted perceptual evaluations on the settings that were judged most ambiguous by the network, which showed that listeners perceived the speech samples as gender-ambiguous, also in prosody-controlled conditions.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
International Speech Communication Association , 2023. p. 1234-1238
Keywords [en]
gender bias, human-computer interaction, speech synthesis
National Category
Natural Language Processing
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-337832DOI: 10.21437/Interspeech.2023-2086ISI: 001186650301078Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85171582438OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-337832DiVA, id: diva2:1803493
Conference
24th International Speech Communication Association, Interspeech 2023, August 20-24, 2023, Dublin, Ireland
Note

QC 20241014

Available from: 2023-10-09 Created: 2023-10-09 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved

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Székely, ÉvaGustafsson, JoakimTorre, Ilaria

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