VoiceX as a Design Tool for Virtual Agents' Voices
Daksitha Senel Withanage Don, Florian Lingenfelser, Johanna Magdalena Kuch, Otto Grothe, Ruben Schlagowski, Elisabeth André, Silvan Mertes · 2025
Modern TTS systems are capable of creating highly realistic and natural-sounding speech, making them an important tool when designing virtual agents.While sounding highly realistic, the process of customizing such TTS voices remains a complex task, mostly requiring the expertise of specialists within the field.One reason for this is the utilization of deep learning models, which are characterized by their expansive, non-interpretable parameter spaces, restricting the feasibility of manual voice customization.In this paper, we present a novel human-in-the-loop paradigm based on an evolutionary algorithm for directly interacting with the parameter space of a neural TTS model.We integrated our approach into a user-friendly graphical user interface that allows users to efficiently create original voices.Those voices can then be used to equip virtual agents with highly customized TTS capabilities by using an open-source programming interface provided by us.Further, in a first pilot study, we show that VoiceX is an appropriate tool for creating individual, custom voices.