This photo, provided by KT Corp. on April 20, 2022, shows the company’s workers testing voice technologies.
SEOUL, April 21 (Korea Bizwire) — KT Corp., a major South Korean telecom operator, said Wednesday it was collaborating with the Seungil Hope Foundation to virtually recover the voices of eight Lou Gehrig’s disease patients and store them in a mobile app, “MaumTalk,” developed for the patients free of charge.
Seungil Hope Foundation is a Korean non-profit organization that raises money for awareness of Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), may cause a variety of health complications as motor cells are gradually destroyed, weakening the muscles. Some may lose their voice if their tongue muscles weaken and end up being paralyzed.
KT used the patients’ pre-recorded voice data to virtually recreate their voices through personalized text-to-speech (P-TTS) and deep-learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
In the “MaumTalk” app, the virtually recreated voices of the patients read out loud the text that is inputted. It can be used for voice and video calls and can transition from voice to video conversations and vice-versa.
KT, jointly with the Seungil Hope Foundation, has been offering support to persons with vocal disabilities to virtually recover their voices.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
