Ebert test

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Ebert (right) at the Conference on World Affairs in September 2002, shortly after his cancer diagnosis Boutte and Ebert.jpg
Ebert (right) at the Conference on World Affairs in September 2002, shortly after his cancer diagnosis

The Ebert test gauges whether a computer-based synthesized voice [1] [2] can tell a joke with sufficient skill to cause people to laugh. [3] It was proposed by film critic Roger Ebert at the 2011 TED conference as a challenge to software developers to have a computerized voice master the inflections, delivery, timing, and intonations of human speech. [1] The test is similar to the Turing test proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 as a way to gauge a computer's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior by generating performance indistinguishable from a human being. [4]

If the computer can successfully tell a joke, and do the timing and delivery as well as Henny Youngman, then that's the voice I want.

— Ebert in 2011 [2]

Ebert lost his voice in 2006 after undergoing surgery to treat thyroid cancer. He employed a Scottish company called CereProc, which custom-tailors text-to-speech software for voiceless customers who record their voices at length before losing them, and mined tapes and DVD commentaries featuring Ebert to create a voice that sounded more like his own voice. [5] He first publicly used the voice they devised for him in his March 2, 2010, appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show . [2] [6] [7]

The audience of Ebert's 2011 TED talk about joke delivery by synthesized voices erupted with laughter when a synthesized voice delivered the following joke: "A guy goes into a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist says, 'You’re crazy.' The guy says, 'I want a second opinion.' The psychiatrist says, 'All right, you’re ugly, too.'" [1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Ostrow, Adam (March 5, 2011). "Roger Ebert's Inspiring Digital Transformation". Mashable Entertainment. Archived from the original on September 7, 2011. Retrieved September 12, 2011. With the help of his wife, two colleagues and the Alex-equipped MacBook that he uses to generate his computerized voice, famed film critic Roger Ebert delivered the final talk at the TED conference on Friday in Long Beach, California....
  2. 1 2 3 Lee, Jennifer 8. (March 7, 2011). "Roger Ebert Tests His Vocal Cords, and Comedic Delivery". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 26, 2012. Retrieved September 12, 2011. Now perhaps, there is the Ebert Test, a way to see if a synthesized voice can deliver humor with the timing to make an audience laugh.... He proposed the Ebert Test as a way to gauge the humanness of a synthesized voice.
  3. ↑ "Roger Ebert's Inspiring Digital Transformation". Tech News. March 5, 2011. Archived from the original on March 25, 2011. Retrieved September 12, 2011. Meanwhile, the technology that enables Ebert to "speak" continues to see improvements – for example, adding more realistic inflection for question marks and exclamation points. In a test of that, which Ebert called the "Ebert test" for computerized voices,
  4. ↑ Pasternack, Alex (April 18, 2011). "A MacBook May Have Given Roger Ebert His Voice, But An iPod Saved His Life (Video)". Motherboard. Archived from the original on September 6, 2011. Retrieved September 12, 2011. He calls it the "Ebert Test," after Turing's AI standard...
  5. ↑ Jones, Chris (February 16, 2010). "Roger Ebert: The Essential Man". Esquire . Archived from the original on September 23, 2011. Retrieved September 15, 2011.
  6. ↑ Ebert, Roger (December 14, 2012). "Hello, this is me speaking". Interviews. RogerEbert.com . Archived from the original on August 8, 2025. Retrieved July 29, 2019.
  7. ↑ Tucker, Ken (March 2, 2010). "'Oprah': Roger Ebert predicts the Oscars, movingly: 'No more surgery for me'". Entertainment Weekly . Archived from the original on December 17, 2014.
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