It's good that Bing, Bard are using the latest Microsoft, Google Cloud offerings but it would be nice to see these speech advances (along with audio palm - https://google-research.github.io/seanet/audiopalm/examples/ etc) hit public api's and/or user interfaces.
Bard's TTS is alright but it's clearly behind.
On that note, Bing's English/Korean TTS is really good. I also didn't realize Microsoft uses the best offerings for free TTS on edge so it blows google's default tts voices away.
Yes. I'm not saying Google's Top Cloud offerings are bad although i still think microsoft's stuff is better.
Just that
1. It's behind their current sota research
2. You can only use those voices extensively by paying for it. Microsoft offers their best stuff on edge for free. So for reading aloud a pdf or web page, microsoft is far better.
It's disappointing, but I wouldn't expect research algorithms to be available immediately unless they held it back until the product is ready. I guess Apple would do that?
> I also didn't realize Microsoft uses the best offerings for free TTS on edge so it blows google's default tts voices away.
This sounds really interesting - can you share a bit more? I'm behind in this space, my parser got all jammed up, something like: "Microsoft uses [the best offerings for free TTS](as in FOSS libraries, or free as in beer SaaS?) [on edge](Edge browser, or on the edge as in client's computer?)(Is the implication that all TTS on the client's computer blows Google's default TTS voices away?)"
I believe they mean that the free TTS feature in Microsoft Edge uses their best technology, and that said tech is better than Google's default offering.
Ha i'm not even asking for code/model releases. It's just a bit funny that what you can *pay* google to use is so far behind what they have up and running collecting dust.
Sure, but there was a time not too long ago when companies were still in the "good will" phase of handing out even highly valuable models like CLIP, guided-diffusion, etc. Come to think, it was mostly OpenAI doing this. And they kinda still do? But far more selectively. I'm just preemptively romanticizing that.
I don’t want to defend Google’s business practices, but this is such a trite comment someone always feels compelled to post on anything about Google, including even a research paper, apparently.
It's a very relevant comment. It tells you to not rely, or expect further development, on any new Google technology, even seemingly good ones, as it can go to the graveyard like many others.
I don't bother to post the comment, but the high likelihood of any Google project/product being killed within a year or two is absolutely the first thought I have whenever a new Google project/product is announced (not because of HN posts, but because of their history), so good job on that Google.
I'll argue it's not trite. It's a concise compilation of the thousands of teeth-gnashing comments here on HN and all over the internet whenever Google randomly drowns another one of its children.
Just fucking stay away from Google products. Period.
First of all it isn't a product. It's a f*king research paper. Like dozens other showing up on HN every day. Most of them never becomes a product.
Second of all, by whining nauseously you drown out discussions on the merits of the technology, and chase people away. I hardly read Google news on HN now precisely because of that reason. Imagine if "Attention is all your need" came out now? [0]
Save your complaint for when Google makes it a product.
>Save your complaint for when Google makes it a product.
or save yourself the trouble and find alternatives to big-G.
It's entirely their own fault that people now view all Google news as temporary and fleeting. People don't want to put time into things that'll get thrown away in a year.
Reading G research papers seems like a shortcut to me, know what will be thrown away in 2 years before it's a valid product in 1 year and someone gets huckleberry'd into devoting time and effort into implementing the dead-product-walking API.
> It's entirely their own fault that people now view all Google news as temporary and fleeting. People don't want to put time into things that'll get thrown away in a year.
Most of research don’t become their own products, from Google or anyone else. As a research project they still have values, unless you are saying Google research is garbage because they get into the habit of canceling their products.
> or save yourself the trouble and find alternatives to big-G
Totally valid point. No need to complain about it in a post about Google research though. It’s tiresome.
Google's non-advertising revenue in the latest quarter was about $15 billion. Is that significant amount of non-ads product revenue? At least that is higher than the revenue of any of IBM, HP, Oracle, Intel, Cisco, Netflix, Broadcom, Qualcomm, or Salesforce in that same quarter.
I think their non-ads businesses alone would be the 6th largest US tech company by revenue. (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, the ads business of Alphabet, Meta. Am I forgetting something?)
Revenue is easy when you lose money on every dollar. Last quarter Ads printed $21B of income, rest was a loss except cloud not losing hundreds of $millions for the very first time.
Bard's TTS is alright but it's clearly behind.
On that note, Bing's English/Korean TTS is really good. I also didn't realize Microsoft uses the best offerings for free TTS on edge so it blows google's default tts voices away.