Sigurður Haukur Birgisson, or Haukur the Third as he is called at the Miðeind office, is a summer employee at the company for the second year in a row. Despite his young age, as Haukur has just turned 19, he has acquired deep knowledge of artificial intelligence and has a bright future in this field. This summer, Haukur is working on an exciting project related to text-to-speech (TTS).

What is text-to-speech?

Text-to-speech is a technology that converts written text into spoken language, allowing computers to speak naturally. It is a key element in digital assistants, aids for visually impaired people, and other solutions that require live speech.

In the project, Haukur is training a text-to-speech model for Icelandic that can mimic voices, accents, and emotions. The project involves collecting audio files and texts, training the model, and evaluating the results. What makes this project particularly interesting is that the model supports emotional speech; it's possible to choose different emotions in the speech, such as anger. Additionally, it supports both soft and hard pronunciation.

"What sets this model apart from other text-to-speech models for Icelandic is a language model that allows it to learn Icelandic and natural pronunciation simultaneously. Most other models don't include a language model and therefore don't have a deep understanding of the language, only the sounds they use. This makes our model much better at understanding and speaking Icelandic naturally," says Haukur.

The model not only understands the sounds but also the context and pronunciation in a realistic way, which is a big step for Icelandic text-to-speech. Haukur works with data that includes both emotional emphases and complex grammatical structures, making the project diverse and educational.

Haukur's advice for beginners

Haukur is also a student of artificial intelligence at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and uses his free time for swimming, sailing, and reading science fiction, especially Brandon Sanderson's book series. He has a great interest in trying new ideas from research and learning new things, which is reflected in his interest in the latest technology and artificial intelligence.

Haukur has clear advice for those who want to start in artificial intelligence:

"Start right away. This is a rapidly growing field with lots of opportunities. Get a good grasp of programming and mathematics, find something you find exciting and start tinkering, whether it's running a model, collecting data, or training a model yourself. Be active on social media, share what you learn, and learn from others. Curiosity and patience are key."

In conclusion

Haukur's summer project at Miðeind shows how new technology can make Icelandic speech more natural and lively. It provides insight into how young people can use the latest technology to learn, experiment, and develop their own ideas. Haukur demonstrates that projects in artificial intelligence can be both challenging and fun, and with the right focus, one can learn a lot in a short time.

If you want to keep up with further projects at Miðeind, you can get the latest news on our website or follow us on social media.