Ask HN: Why are there so few American TTS accents?

2 pointskpsychwave1 comment

Google Cloud, AWS, IBM all seem to offer a generic American English accent but with different voices. Given the huge variety of regional and ethnic accents/dialect in the US, why aren't there more options?

Looking for both technical and business insights.

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Not American, but guessing:

- If you do some, there will be nagging requests to do all of them, however minor they would be

- Accents are not a clear-cut thing, hence customers would argue that "this is not how we pronounce X" based on their variation

- Maybe there's no real need, as most companies in need of a TTS probably operate in the whole country (think telcos and such). People are used to the generic accent since the TV and radio appeared.

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