About DAISYS

We are a speech technology company building machine learning technology that enables us to generate credible speech that is indistinguishable from real human voices, from text. Our technology is not based on copying existing voices through deepfakes, but on the generation of completely new, not yet existing, human sounding voices.

We distinguish ourselves from other providers of this type of service by giving the speech intent and emotion. With this we can, for example, give advertisements or audio books the same credibility as real recorded speech.

Team

Barnier Geerling

CEO

I’m a voice-over artist and sound engineer. I own a recording studio and am founder of the largest Dutch educational institute for voice-overs, Stemacteren.nl. As a ‘nerd’ and technician I have a broad knowledge of the exploitation of voice and audio technology in new applications.

I’m captivated by questions like “How can humans and technology strengthen, augment and improve each other?” and “Will computers ever be able to think, feel, and act just like us?” I enjoy composing music and making pastries in my spare time.

Joost Broekens

CTO

I am Associate Professor Affective Computing at Leiden University, and used to be CTO of Interactive Robotics B.V. I am fascinated by emotion and intelligence, and study this using AI and robots. I love surfing and travelling with my campervan together with my family.

Johan Talsma

CFO

Starting working with Deloitte I graduated as a Certified Public Accountant soon after. I succesfully started my own accounting & auditing firm, focussing on SME’s. I gained extensive experience in the fields of accounting, auditing, tax, finance and valuation, besides from being an entrepreneur.

Ioannis Lelekas

Lead Deep Learning Engineer

I’m in love with AI, even though I have never watched “Terminator” and “Matrix”. Apart from convolutions and back-propagation I enjoy playing football and cycling, especially in the amazing Dutch nature. I enjoy Dutch oude kaas, beers from local breweries and of course stroopwafels!

Jorge Bustos

Deep Learning Engineer

I am specialized in Digital Signal Processing and Deep Learning. Music lover and amateur music producer (professional according to my family). I love to philosophize about AI concepts in an absurd way.

Gido Limperg

Deep Learning Engineer

I’m a Deep Learning Engineer with a broad interest in all areas of AI. I enjoy cycling, bouldering, music, videogames, complaining about the weather, drinking tea, and eating broodjes met kaas.

Dayana Rodriguez

Sound Engineer

I am a sound engineer with a background in music, and a piano player. Though coming from the music industry, I discovered a whole new world of AI in which audio plays an important role. I love sharing a good biertje next to a canal with friends, and cycling to discover as much as possible in The Netherlands.

News

02.12.2021

Dutch AI start-up creates breakthrough in voice technology
‘New voices that sound like real people’

Today, voice technology company DAISYS B.V. (Leiden, the Netherlands) announces their release of a worldwide breakthrough in the development of human-sounding voices by means of artificial intelligence. The innovation, which narrates written texts in a natural way, generates new, realistically sounding, not yet existing voices. Speech properties like speed and pitch, can be adjusted in real time, allowing the voice to be customised.
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Worldwide breakthrough
‘This is a huge breakthrough. Up until now, naturally sounding voices were always deepfake, based on audio data of professional speakers. But deepfakes in text-to-speech for many reasons aren’t usable. One of those reasons is that not everyone wishes to lend out their voice without having control about what is being said with it. With this technology, as the first company in the world, we are able to create new voices that sound like real people,’ Barnier Geerling, CEO of DAISYS explains. ‘In addition,’ Geerling says, ‘this technology makes it easier and faster to apply speech-steered technology. The market potential is enormous, think of audio-visual media using voice-overs, or ‘talking’ cars, robots, or appliances. For manufacturers this means the possibility to integrate realistic speech in their products becomes much easier and more efficient.’

Artificial Intelligence
During the past year and a half, the start-up from Leiden has worked on its technology with a small international team of Artificial Intelligence (AI) developers. ‘We’ve made several important adjustments to the existing basic technology. In addition, we had to cleverly ‘train’ our models, using the right balance of speech data from different speakers. Because of this we’ve managed to generate new, naturally sounding voices that can be real-time adjusted by means of gender, pitch, power and speed.’ Dr.ir Joost Broekens, Chief Technology Officer at DAISYS, explains.

Voice technology; ever more important
The new voice technology is suitable for all online and offline surroundings where the human voice is used, like traditional media, smart devices, games, robots, speech assistants and public announcement systems. Geerling: ‘Credible voice technology is becoming ever more important. Nowadays, everything has a voice: your phone, your car, even your coffee machine. Imagine being able to adjust that voice to your preference. That future is now within reach.’

Audio Samples

Listen to an example of our generative voices here. For this sample we just typed in text. No deepfakes were hurt in the making of this.

Audio sample : I am real?
Contact us via: talktome@daisys.ai