Hi, I’m Goose!
Talk to me, Goose!
-Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, Top Gun (1986)
What’s up with that?
Talk to me, Goose! Or, rather, I’ll talk to you (or FOR you, if you will). Just type or paste it in, and I’ll say it back to you in whichever voice you choose, or even your own. I became concerned about losing my ability to speak to ALS / Motor Neuron Disease and was in search of a solution. Coming up short in my search for high-quality, fast, emotionally-rich text-to-speech tools, Talk to Me, Goose! was born.
With more than dozens of voices to choose from, and even my own voice clone, I found my ability to maintain my ability to speak with a “Wingman” to help.
Talk to Me, Goose! is here.
Cutting Edge Technology
Working with the cutting-edge technology from ElevenLabs, Talk to Me, Goose!, is an AI-enabled text-to-speech platform that can be your mobile Wingman. or flight partner, when you need it.
It’s not just Augmented and Alternative Communication?
Nope! Beyond the augmented and alternative communications (“AAC”) use case, Talk to Me, Goose! can also be used to do professional narration of videos, YouTube Shorts, podcasts, trainings and audio short story recordings. It can synthesize text up to approximately 40,000 characters per submission in about 30 different languages. With seamless integration to the leading voice synthesis technology provider, all you need to do is log in and go. We offer bundles of tokens or different subscription tiers tailored to meet your needs whether they are just having fun, narrating an occasional video, producing a periodic video, building high-quality regular programming for YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or, like me, if you need to have a Wingman to help you out just navigating every day using your own voice. Check out our Bundles and Subscription Tiers and choose the flight plan or approach that is right for you.
What if I just want to try it?
You can just download the app and try it with a few minutes of free Text-To-Speech synthesis at no charge. If you want to play around for a while, just pick up some Pre-Flight bundles of tokens for $0.99 to play around in the cockpit for awhile, or go for a Short Hop, a little Commuter flight or take a Long Haul flight on your own. If you’re hooked, you can subscribe at different levels on a monthly basis. And, if you need a Wingman, there’s a special subscription model just for you to connect you to your very own voice clone with a very low monthly subscription fee just to use the service with no limits on access.
Tell me more about the motivation
You can read below about the motivation behind Talk to Me, Goose! In doing our research for the highest quality text-to-speech and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (“AAC”) and speech generating devices, we were left a little bit wanting for something that would provide an easy-to-use, mobile, fast and the most emotionally rich experience available. In building Talk to Me, Goose! we realized that there are lots of uses for a solution like this. So check it out, and let’s go!
The Motivation
Motor Neuron Disease
When diagnosed with motor neuron disease, one realizes that the possibiilty of losing one’s ability to speak with one’s own voice is terrifying. A life spent talking, sharing, telling stories, engaging with others, interacting with the world will, over time become…different, slower and more difficult. Motivated to find a way to hold onto a uniquely personal aspect of communication, the spoken word, we began a journey to find a solution. As our search progressed, there seemed not to be a lot of solutions available that were taking advantage of the latest in Generative AI capabilities.
The Hypothesis
The hypothesis was that the latest in artificial intelligence could bring not only similarity in intonation and pronunciation of spoken words but also a similarity of cadence, emotion and even improvisation to speech, something that would make text-to-speech be more lifelike. In our opinion, the technology should make text to speech sound as natural as possible, be mobile, easy-to-use, and fast. This led us to build a text-to-speech synthesis application called, Talk to Me, Goose!
But, what about the name?
And, because no Gen Xer would be worth his salt without paying homage to Maverick’s RIO, “Goose” Bradshaw, the name of the app was obviously clear.
The Technology
Why ElevenLabs?
In searching for the best technology available for performing high quality text-to-speech voice synthesis, ElevenLabs rose to the top, hands down. They offer the ability to safely and securely create a professional clone of one’s own voice, and they offer an API for integration into a mobile application allowing for fast, iterative development which has led to the rapid launch of Talk to Me, Goose!
What is it?
Talk to Me, Goose! is an iPhone and iPad application for easy, mobile text-to-speech synthesis. Designed initially for people living with motor neuron disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or other medical conditions as an augmented and alternative communication and speech generation device, it became clear that there are many other applicable use cases. So, for folks like me who may have issues impacting our ability to communicate, Talk to Me, Goose! can be your Wingman, but it can also be so much more.
How much can I synthesize at once?
The technology allows you to synthesize as much as 10,000 characters at once using the default model. That’s about 10 minutes of speech at a time. You can do this in as many as ~30 different languages as well. If you need longer form text-to-speech synthesis, you can do that as well with the longer form text-to-speech model and synthesize as many as 40,000 characters at once. That’s almost 40 minutes of speech at once! And, this can be downloaded and shared as you see fit.