Here are some entertaining videos on human-device interaction that could be used in an introductory course.
A video surveying some of the history of text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis (good for a general audience)
Google Duplex
Susan Bennett: Woman behind voice of original Siri (US-English female)
Amazon: “How we make the Alexa voice sound more human-like” (June 2019)
Q, ‘genderless’ voice assistant (https://www.npr.org/2019/03/21/705395100/meet-q-the-gender-neutral-voice-assistant)
Voice synthesis from 5 seconds of audio data (neural TTS)
History of ‘MacinTalk’ voice
Parody of older adults using Amazon Alexa (SNL)
Considering the uncanny valley and cue incongruence…. Parody of Alexa with a human body
News articles about speech technology
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/what-robots-can-and-cant-do-for-the-old-and-lonely
Michelle Cohn 