The Ebert Test
A measure of the humanness of a synthesized voice, proposed by film critic Roger Ebert, which gauges whether a computer-based synthesized voice can tell a joke with sufficient skill to cause people to laugh. This test was proposed by Ebert during his 2011 TED talk as a challenge to software developers to create a computerized voice that can master the timing, inflections, delivery, and intonations of a human speaker.
Areas of application
- natural language processing
- speech recognition
- voice assistants
- AI-generated content
- human-computer interaction
Example
For instance, a synthesized voice that can successfully tell a joke like ‘Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything.’ would pass the Ebert test.