arXiv:2506.12311v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Text-to-speech (TTS) for Modern Hebrew is challenged by the language's orthographic complexity, with existing solutions ignoring underspecified phonetic features such as stress. We present a framework for more phonetically accurate Hebrew TTS with four contributions: (1) Phonikud, an open-source Hebrew grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) system that outputs fully-specified International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions, designed by augmenting a base diacritizer. (2) The ILSpeech corpus of paired Hebrew audio, text, and expert IPA annotations. (3)
The increasing sophistication of AI models and the critical need for more accurate and culturally specific AI tools are driving advancements in language-specific technologies.
Improved Hebrew TTS addresses a significant linguistic challenge, enabling more natural and effective human-AI interaction for a substantial language group and highlighting the need for localized AI solutions.
The development of 'Phonikud' and the ILSpeech corpus provide crucial open-source tools and datasets, potentially accelerating the development of high-quality Hebrew TTS and other language technologies.
- · Israeli tech sector
- · Hebrew speakers
- · NLP researchers
- · AI localization providers
- · Developers relying solely on generic TTS solutions
Enhances the quality and usability of AI applications in Modern Hebrew, such as virtual assistants and accessibility tools.
Could foster increased AI development and adoption within the Israeli ecosystem, attracting further investment and talent.
Sets a precedent for overcoming similar 'underspecified phonetic features' in other complex languages, thereby advancing global AI equity and functionality.
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Read at arXiv cs.CL