I came across LOVO's offer completely by accident. Just a few days ago I didn't know that human voice synthesis technology is so advanced and ... affordable, that anyone can have access to it nowadays if only they need or can use it.

When I read the description of the offer I thought that maybe I could use this technology to enrich the podcasts that I record by including in them various quotes (that are referred to in my podcasts) read by other voices . But then the thought occurred to me that this technology might work well in English, but in my native Polish it's probably far from perfect or even just plain correct.

Fifteen minutes of "playing" with my LOVO account was enough to be "bought". What I can get is unbelievable to me.

I have 5 Polish voices at my disposal. Three of them are ... good enough, but some unnaturalness can be heard, although I wouldn't call them "robotic" or "mechanical" voices by any means. The other two, on the other hand, are ... almost perfect. As I listened to them, I could not get out of my mind that LOVO managed to bring technology to such a high level.

Every language has its nuances, dialects and accents, but Polish has one of the most difficult spellings and grammars, which also translates into the way individual words are pronounced, as well as the "melody" in whole sentences or paragraphs. When I pasted a few different texts in the otherwise clear and easy-to-use LOVO workspace and listened to how they were converted into spoken text, I immediately thought that $49 for LTD access to this technology was an incredible bargain.

The clarity and naturalness of these two best voices is top notch. Due to lack of time, I have not done a test, but I am confident that I can easily fool many of my compatriots and if someone does not know that this is a synthetic voice, no one will notice the difference on a short text consisting of a few paragraphs.

The only thing I miss for now is ... the limited nature of the available voices. They are all voices of rather young people and I would love to see both a female and male voice of an older person (say 60 years old). I hope LOVO will expand the offer of Polish voices in the near future, just like it does with English-speaking voices.

Anyway, I'm incredibly positively surprised by the possibilities offered and thanks to LOVO and AS for this offer :)