Justy: So I read this thing about Coda and how they picked voices for it. They ended up with four styles: professional, formal, casual, energetic.
Cody: Yeah, I saw that. They did over 8,000 pairwise listener judgments. That's a lot of data.
Justy: Right? And they partnered with some company called Podonos for the audio evaluation. I guess that's how they validated the voices.
Cody: The article makes a big deal about not using a linear continuum for voice styles. They say voices carry semantic weight and have meaning based on context.
Justy: I think what caught my attention was the distinction between professional and formal. Professional is more about confidence and being articulate, while formal is about occasion and ritual.
Cody: That makes sense. I can see how that would be important for different applications. Like, you wouldn't want a formal voice for customer support.
Justy: Exactly. And they mention that the vector embeddings of voices live in a latent space. That's some ML stuff I'm not sure I fully get.
Cody: Don't worry, I think it's just a fancy way of saying that voices can have multiple characteristics and you can't just reduce them to a single axis.
Justy: Okay, that makes sense. So, who do you think should care about this? Is it just for big enterprises?
Cody: I think it's interesting for anyone working in voice tech or ML. But also, if you're building something that needs a specific tone or style, this could be relevant.
Justy: Alright, I think that's a good take. And I'm curious, do you think this changes anything practical for us?
Cody: For me, it's more about understanding how voice models are developed. It's not a game-changer, but it's interesting to see how others approach the problem.
Justy: Cool. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap up. Thanks for digging into this with me, Cody.