Gunrock: A Social Bot for Complex and Engaging Long Conversations Dian Yu, Michelle Cohn, Yi Mang Yang, Chun Yen Chen, Weiming Wen, Jiaping Zhang, Mingyang Zhou, Kevin Jesse, Austin Chau, Antara Bhowmick, Shreenath Iyer, Giritheja Sreenivasulu, Sam Davidson, Ashwin Bhandare and Zhou Yu [pdf]
You can see our system demonstration (2 minute video):
The Gunrock team at the 2018 reception after winning the Alexa Prize!
Great job to Tyler Kline and Aleese Block who presented two of our projects at the California Meeting on Psycholinguistics (CAMP3) this weekend at UC Santa Cruz!
Speech Alignment of Females toward Voice-AI and Human Voices: Conversational Role Influences Phonetic Imitation in a Map Task (Tyler Kline, Bruno Ferenc Segedin, Michelle Cohn & Georgia Zellou)
California listeners’ patterns of partial compensation for coarticulatory /u/-fronting is influenced by the apparent age of the speaker (Aleese Block, Michelle Cohn & Georgia Zellou)
Tyler Kline presentingAleese Block presenting via handout during the power outage
Along with Georgia Zellou & Bruno Ferenc Segedin (UC Davis Phonetics Lab), I traveled to Graz, Austria to present some of our research at the 2019 Interspeech Conference!
Georgia Zellou presenting our research exploring individual variation in speech toward Siri vs. human voicesPresenting our project looking at alignment toward emotionally expressive productions by Amazon AlexaBruno Ferenc Segedin presenting our research exploring phonetic adaptation to human vs. Amazon Alexa voicesPresenting research on acoustic cue weighting for musicians / nonmusicians
While at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden) this September, Michelle Cohn met up with Dr. Jonas Beskow, co-founder of Furhat Robotics, and Ph.D. student Patrik Jonell. Together with Georgia Zellou, they are conducting a study to test the role of embodiment and gender in human’s voice-AI interaction with three platforms: Amazon Echo, Nao, and Furhat.
Michelle Cohn, Jonas Beskow, & Patrik Jonell at the KTH Studio
Along with Dr. Zhou Yu and Arbit Chen (UCD Computer Science), we are thrilled that we have a paper accepted to the Special Interest Group on Discourse (SIGDIAL) meeting in Stockholm, Sweden.
Cohn, M., Chen, C., Yu, Z. (2019). A Large-Scale User Study of an Alexa Prize Chatbot: Effect of TTS Dynamism on Perceived Quality of Social Dialog. (In press). 2019 Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue, SIGDIAL.
We are excited that several papers have been accepted for the Interspeech 2019 meeting in Graz, Austria!
Papers on human-voice AI interaction
Cohn, M., & Zellou, G.(2019). Expressiveness influences human vocal alignment toward voice-AI. (In press). 2019 Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH.
Snyder, C. Cohn, M., & Zellou, G. (2019). Individual variation in cognitive processing style predicts differences in phonetic imitation of device and human voices. (In press). 2019 Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH.
Ferenc Segedin, C. Cohn, M., & Zellou, G. (2019). Perceptual adaptation to device and human voices: learning and generalization of a phonetic shift across real and voice-AI talkers. (In press). 2019 Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH.
Paper on musical training & speech perception
Cohn, M., Zellou, G., Barreda, S. (2019) The role of musical experience in the perceptual weighting of acoustic cues for the obstruent coda voicing contrast in American English. (In press). 2019 Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH.
Undergraduate researcher, Melina Sarian, did a fantastic job presenting her research project at the ‘Most Innovative Research’ Panel. Her work extends our project exploring device expressiveness to human voices.
Sarian, M., Cohn, M., & Zellou, G. Human vocal alignment to voiceAI is mediated by acoustic expressiveness. [Talk].UC Davis Symposium on Language Research. Davis, CA.
Melina Sarian presenting at the ‘Most Innovative Research’ PanelMelina Sarian presenting at the ‘Most Innovative Research’ Panel
Dynamics of Voice-AI Interaction Panel
Bruno Ferenc Segedin and I also presented two talks in our ‘Dynamics of Voice-AI Interaction’ panel
Cohn, M., Ferenc Segedin, B., & Zellou, G. Differences in cross-generational prosodic alignment toward device and human voices [Talk]. UC Davis Symposium on Language Research. Davis, CA.
Ferenc Segedin, B., Cohn, M., & Zellou, G. Perceptual adaptation to Amazon’s Alexa and human voices: asymmetries in learning and generalization of a novel accent across real and AI talkers. [Talk]. UC Davis Symposium on Language Research. Davis, CA.
Congratulations to our RAs who presented at the 2019 UC Davis Undergraduate Research Conference! It was a fantastic experience to co-mentor these RAs on their independent research projects.
We are thrilled that two papers from our lab were accepted for the 2019 International Congress of Phonetic Sciences meeting in Melbourne, Australia!
Cohn, M., Ferenc Segedin, B., Zellou, G. Imitating Siri: Socially-mediated vocal alignment to device and human voices. (In press). 2019 International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS).
Brotherton, C., Cohn, M., Zellou, G., Barreda, S. Sub-regional variation in positioning and degree of nasalization of /æ/ allophones in California (In press). 2019 International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS).
See below for the recording for the 5 Minute Linguist (5ML) competition, emceed by John McWhorter, at the Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting in New York City. The aim of the competition to communicate a research project to a general audience in just 5 minutes (and with no notes!).
We are thrilled that two talks selected as finalists were from our lab! Talk 1 (0:00 – 8:22) Michelle Cohn (University of California, Davis): Phonologically motivated phonetic repair strategies in Siri- and human-directed speech
Talk 2 (9:45 – 15:43) Bruno Ferenc Segedin (University of California, Davis) & Georgia Zellou (University of California, Davis): Lexical frequency mediates compensation for coarticulation: Are the seeds of sound change word-specific?
Congratulations to the other presenters, as well!
Andrew Cheng (University of California, Berkeley): Style-shifting, Bilingualism, and the Koreatown Accent
Kristin Denlinger (University of Texas, Austin) & Michael Everdell (University of Texas, Austin): A Mereological Approach to Reduplicated Resultatives in O’dam
Jessi Grieser (University of Tennessee): Talking Place, Speaking Race: Topic-based style shifting in African American Language as an expression of place identity
Kate Mesh (University of Haifa): Gaze decouples from pointing as a result of grammaticalization: Evidence from Israeli Sign Language
Jennifer Schechter (University at Buffalo): What Donald Trump’s ‘thoughts’ reveal: An acoustic analysis of 45’s coffee vowel
Ai Taniguchi (Carleton University): Why we say stuff
Michelle Cohn 