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.
In the search for a solution for an easy-to-use, high-quality, fast, and emotionally-rich text-to-speech tool, we were disappointed with what we found. Many of the tools were rigid in their design. They rendered voice poorly, with little intonation and emotion, or were slow and clunky.
Thus, Talk to Me, Goose! was born.
With more than dozens of voices to choose from, and even your own voice clone, when you need a “Wingman” to help, Talk to Me, Goose! is here.
If you want to find out more detail about the product features go here. But, first, go download it and try. It’s free to try. If you already have an ElevenLabs voice clone and want to connect it, you can subscribe to the Wingman tier for $4.99 per month to unlock all of the AI-enabled features for use with your voice clone.
They always say that seeing is believing though, so you can also check out the demo video to see what all the fuss is about.
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.
Beyond Speech – Reconnect with People!
Beyond reconnecting with speech, it was clear that there is a need to reconnect with people too. In using an augmented and alternative communication solution there is an awkward pause in the flow of a conversation. You speak to me, and I type my response. It takes time. You tune out. You disengage. It’s awkward. How might we eliminate that awkward pause? Here’s where Talk to Me, Goose! is really special, in my opinion.
In the Top Gun movie, when Goose was gone, Merlin took his seat. Well, here we are. Merlin takes his seat once again. He’s here to help. He can take a few clicks – a topic area and a tone, and a few words to give you a suggestion of a full block of text to use in your response without all that typing. He’s here to be your Wingman and reduce all that typing. He’s here to reduce that awkward pause and allow you to reengage, to reconnect with people. We hope.
Give us feedback on it. That’s what we want, to hear from you. Let us know on the contact page.
Reconnecting with people is also about reducing fatigue, speeding up communications and alleviating stress. We think Merlin does all that too. Give it a try. On the iPad, Merlin even learns with you over time, surfacing increasingly relevant phrases that are semantically similar to your own text for you to use in contextually aware ways.
Wouldn’t a world where you didn’t have to type at all be cool?
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.
Coming Soon! Integrated with Message Banking!
As we’ve been working on the application, we’ve come to notice that we haven’t seen anything that has integrated text-to-speech with a quality voice clone with the ability also to access previously banked messages. So, we’re working on that. Stay tuned. We are just about there. Coming soon to Talk to Me, Goose! you’ll have the ability to integrate your previously banked messages into your Favorites within the app to be able to play back previously recorded messages as well as generate new messages with your cloned voice in the same application. This website will be fully integrated with the mobile application. It’s taking a little time to get all the dials and knobs set right, but we’re just about there. I expect that this will be live no later than mid-June, but it will most likely be earlier. The prototype is working now, but it needs to be easier to use. In the meantime, we’re continuing to make enhancements to the user experience. Tell us what you like and don’t like. Tell us what you want (or don’t want). We’re learning and we’re willing to listen.
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, that was fast and provided 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!
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 5,000 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.
The Motivation
What do people do?
When David was faced with the possibiilty of losing his ability to speak with his own voice, it was 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! Beyond using AI for rendering great speech, we also believed that the latest advances in AI could enable a much better user experience too. Thus, Merlin was born as well. And, a powerful text-to-speech tool with a number of different applications is here.
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 as a way to calm the nerves of someone at risk of losing the ability to speak and looking for 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 5,000 characters at once using the default model. That’s about 5 minutes of speech at a time. You can do this in as many as ~30 different languages as well. We are working on the capability to do longer form text-to-speech as well, so bear with us as we resolve some latency issues! Synthesized speech can be downloaded and shared as you see fit.