Google’s DeepMind division has claimed a big leap forward in producing computer-generated speech, potentially bringing forward the day when machines sound as natural as humans.

谷歌(Google)旗下的DeepMind称，在计算机语音生成领域取得巨大飞跃。这一技术进步可能会令机器像人一样自然发声的一天提前到来。

Researchers at the UK-based artificial intelligence arm said tests of their system with human listeners, though unavoidably subjective¹, had shown that the technology halves the quality gap that exists between today’s computer systems and human speech.

这家总部驻英国的人工智能分公司的研究人员表示，由人类听众对其系统的测试（尽管这种测试不可避免地带有主观性）显示，该技术将目前计算机系统与人类说话间存在的质量差距缩小了一半。

One person familiar with the research said the system, called WaveNet, was not being employed in any of Google’s products yet, and that the massive computing² power it needed to generate speech made it impractical³ for real world use for the foreseeable future.

一位知情人士表示，这一名叫WaveNet的系统尚未被用于谷歌任何产品。该技术在生成语音时需要极大的运算能力，令它在可以预期的未来无法实际运用到真实世界。

The research that led to WaveNet, along with a number of samples of speech generated by the system, was published online on Thursday.

周四，WaveNet的相关研究以及一系列该系统生成的语音样本被发布到网上。