"Thank you. Please select a voice. I will now repeat five quotes in five different voices. Tell me which voice you like most by repeating part of my quote."
"Alright."
"When a society makes war, the men generally have to pass a fitness test before they're allowed, to risk their lives. I suppose it helps win the war."
It was raspy and low, but feminine, with a thick tint of sexual flirtation. Much like the voices used for female spellcasters in Chinese MMOs. She sounded exactly as someone imagines a sexbot should. This one was a definite no.
"We juggle priceless eggs in variable gravity. I am afraid. I will taste fear until I die."
He thought the quote strange, but this was the default Aurora voice which was both pleasant and feminine.
"Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself."
A proud-sounding voice, like that of an epic heroine. Unfortunately for her, she was five feet tall curled up in a coward's position on the floor. That voice was never going to suit her. It was surely someone's thing, but not Tom's.
"We play your part in order to understand you, but you each seem to play a thousand parts."
A high-pitched, and frankly annoying, animesque voice. Halfway between selling you something, and trying to convince onii-chan to take her to the park. Sounding young enough to make him feel uncomfortable.
"I could translate, but it would be meaningless. They have welcomed us in the name of their Emperor."
A soft-spoken and sweet voice. Attempting to, with unmerited confidence, emulate a shy girl. The ends of each sentence were punctuated with a sense of acute erudition. It was impressive that the bot was able to do that kind of text parsing. The cloud updates were starting to kick in surely. The best for last as they say. Tom had always liked shy girls.
"In the name of their Emperor."
The next lines from her were spoken in this new voice. It had now become part of her identity. She gave examples to further modulate the voice for more granular customization. Each change was accompanied by a voice example, in the words currently being spoken.
"Would you like to change the pitch of this voice? I could go with a medium-high pitch, high pitch, medium-low pitch, low pitch, or the default medium pitch."
"Can you repeat the medium-low pitch for me again?"
"I could translate, but it would be meaningless. They have welcomed us in the name of their Emperor."
The voice he selected was a little high already on its default pitch. Something about the medium-low pitch reached out to him. It felt like a voice he wanted to hear. Maybe one similar to a voice from his childhood. He couldn't exactly place it.
"One more time?"
"I could translate, but it would be meaningless. They have welcomed us in the name of their Emperor."
"The medium-low pitch would be fine."
"Would you like to select the medium-low pitch for this voice?"
"Yes."
"You may change my voice and its pitch under the voice section of the administration settings accessed either by saying "settings", or through the settings menu in the Teamon mobile app."
"Alright."
"Three steps remain to complete the setup process. I need to update my software and firmware from the Teamon cloud to ensure I am functioning properly. While this is occurring, I will need to you open the Teamon app. A notification was sent to your inbox containing a document that needs to be read aloud. This document will help train my neural network, and the Teamon cloud, to recognize your voice specifically. This is to ensure that I follow only commands issued by you. This may take about an hour depending on the speed at which you orate. Please read the document at your normal oral reading rate. I can process your voice at any speed. Do not feel the need to slow down or recorrect your speech if you misspeak. Please orally dictate the entire document to the best of your ability. You need to be secluded from most other sounds for the whole duration. You may need to plug in your phone."
The words "entire" and "whole" had inflection placed on them to indicate their importance. Her cadence now had the feeling of a teacher about to deliver an exam. Indeed, a notification was sent to his phone from Teamon. Inside was a link to a PDF document on their website. It appeared to be a three-act short story totaling about 5000 words.
"Oh, alright. Glad my phone is charged."
"Are you able to start now?"
"I am."
"To begin training, simply start reading the document. If the training will be interrupted, say "pause". To resume the training, say "resume". I may pause the training myself if there is too much background sound."
Tom lived alone. He didn't even have pets. Just him, his computer, and her. The short story started with "She could hear everything, but dared not open her eyes.". As he spoke these words, Kirsch's eyes closed slowly. The indicator light on her plastic ears began to cycle through the RGB spectrum, from red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, magenta, and back to red again. Over and over. It was almost mesmerizing.
The story read as a cyberpunk neo-noir science fiction crime story resulting in a female android attempting to escape with her human lover from their city. After entrapping a corrupt cop who was stealing data from a corporation to frame him for the murder of his android lover's designer. It was a unique premise, but an average telling by most standards. It was entertaining enough to pass the time. Though, he would not buy a whole book of this. Certainly, it was themed to match the task he was performing. Reading aloud to an android lover.
It took less than the hour she'd predicted, an obvious overestimate to make less skilled readers feel better about themselves. After the last word of the story, "blade." was spoken, her illuminated ears shot from a slow cycle of rainbow colors to rapidly blinking green. Her eyes opened, and she began to speak.
"The text recording has been uploaded to the Teamon cloud to be processed. At this current time, it may take 6 to 8 hours or longer to fully process. I have already validated that the data is complete enough to make a secure model of your voice. In the meantime, I will use local sound comparison to verify a voice match. This is slower than model verification which will be used after your voice is processed, but this is only temporary."
"Cool, is your setup complete?"
"I have downloaded all software and firmware updates, and need to restart to finalize their installation. I can do that now, it will only take a minute. Would you like me to restart now?"
"Yeah, go on ahead."
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