It's one thing to hear the president discuss the big issues at a State of the Union address, but what about hearing him call out movie quotes, your own name, or what he thinks about Dark Souls III?
Talk Obama to Me is a speech synthesizer app developed in Python by Ed King, a linguistics PhD candidate from Stanford, that takes in anything you type and churns out a video in which the POTUS is speaking back whatever words you put in.
The program searches a catalog of the prez's past speeches and appearances, parsing the exact words to match your inputted phrase, and reassembles them into a supercut that is both entertaining and impressive, despite being a little on the choppy side.
Splicing together voice clips for amusing effect isn't anything new. Many of us know about that video of Obama "singing" Tay-Sway's Shake It Off, and last week we witnessed Hearthstone cards perform Britney Spears.
However, the fact that the Barackbot can produce similar videos on the fly - even going so far as to blend pieces of words into new ones not normally used in the president's vernacular - is what makes Talk Obama to Me stand out, as well as King's language background.
Mileage may vary with certain words and phrases, but so long as we're able to pat ourselves on the back thanks to the US's leader giving us a shout-out, we'll call it good. Just be sure to use this power for good, not evil.
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