A Reg reader received an automated call warning of potential water discoloration during planned works from January 19-25. The message advised running taps for twenty minutes if the water appeared discolored - standard stuff, if a bit robotic. In the recording forwarded to us, a female voice told our reader what to expect. All good, if a little robotic. However, things went off the rails a bit when the robot attempted to read out the URL for Severn Trent: http://www.stwater.co.uk/discolouration.
Meet Neuro-sama, a cutesy AI-powered character which is now the top streamer on Twitch by active subscriber-count, according to Twitch Tracker. At the time of writing, Nuero-sama - streaming via the Twitch channel Vedal987 - has 165,268 paid active subscribers, well above the second-highest channel, the human-ran Jynxzi. On Twitch, each paid subscriber is valued at $5 a month, some of which is split with Twitch. According to an estimate by Dextero, that means Neuro-sama is raking in at least $400,000 a month just from subscriptions - and that's on top of random viewer donations, sponsorships, and ad revenue.
Google is testing an option to read aloud the AI Overviews by clicking on a speaker icon at the top of the AI Overview within Google Search. And the crazy thing, this is being tested in the US. Glenn Gabe, who is based in the United States, spotted this and posted about it on X a couple of weeks ago and he still sees it pop up here and there for AI Overviews.
Voices, an open-source text-to-speech project, was designed for applications running on Java 17 or newer. The library requires no external APIs or manually installed software. Audio files can be generated for various languages based on dictionaries or OpenVoice. Henry Coles, creator of Voices and Pitest and head of mutation testing at Arcmutate, introduced Voices on Bluesky in September 2025 and the latest version, released in late October 2025, is 0.0.8.
Generate Speech is the first time Adobe has added text-to-speech capabilities to Firefly, leveraging its own Firefly models, as well as models from ElevenLabs. At launch, Adobe says it'll support 15 languages with Generate Speech, and you'll be able to add emotion tags. These tags aren't universal, so you can add different tags to different parts of a line to change the inflection. Generate Soundtrack and Generate Speech are rolling out shortly to Firefly.
When we talk about accessibility in Captivate, we're usually referring to: Screen reader support (JAWS, NVDA, Narrator, VoiceOver) Keyboard navigation Closed captions Text-to-Speech narration Together, these features make eLearning usable for learners with vision impairments, hearing loss, or those who simply prefer auditory learning. How to Add Text-to-Speech in Adobe Captivate Write Slide Notes In the Notes panel, type the narration you want spoken.
