Scotrail AI Generated Onboard Announcements

[Ben Conlin]

As reported by The National, Scotrail has announced they will start using an AI generated voice named “Iona” for their onboard announcement.

Scotrail AI Announcements

 

[Class15]

Good to see AI being used productively. I hope this goes very well.

 

[TT-ONR-NRN]

Good to see AI being used productively. I hope this goes very well.

Not great for us freelance voice artists. But there you go.

 

[Class15]

Not great for us freelance voice artists. But there you go.

Ah yes of course that is unfortunate. I’m sure they won’t come in everywhere immediately though on the bright side!

 

[kkong]

This is not "AI".

As the article says, it is text-to-speech (TTS) which has been around and in use for decades in many different applications.

 

[Parallel]

As reported by The National, Scotrail has announced they will start using an AI generated voice named “Iona” for their onboard announcement.

Scotrail AI Announcements

They certainly sound less clear than the previous announcements supplied by Fletcher.

 

[Geeves]

Considering how much text to speech seems to struggle with simple places like Rochdale becoming Rockdale I am interested to see how they cope with some of the Scottish destinations

 

[CaptainHaddock]

As reported by The National, Scotrail has announced they will start using an AI generated voice named “Iona” for their onboard announcement.

Scotrail AI Announcements

Is AI intelligent enough yet to know when to keep quiet and not make unnecessary announcements?

 

[matt]

Already being discussed here https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/new-scotrail-train-announcements.286380/