How to make speech with your own, unique voice an everyday right even for those who don’t currently have it?

Background

Countless factors define how we identify as human beings, many of which are so self-evident that they do not cross our minds in everyday life. Abruptly losing a personal feature is devastating, especially when the lost feature is evident to others. Speech with own, distinctly unique voice is one of them.

Already losing a tooth impairs one’s ability to speak, creating potential dent to self-confidence. Imagine the effect of suddenly losing your own voice would have on your life. Everyday communication situations would become challenges with an impaired voice and while people want, and will understand you, it is a life-altering event.

Challenge

Speech synthesizer, which was popularized by Stephen Hawking, enables speech but replaces personality with a robotic voice. A more humane solution might be found from the movie industry, where voice conversion methodologies have been used for various speech-altering purposes. As real-time and natural voice conversion becomes reality with the development of processing, internet connections and AI, it is time to make them work for humanity.

Using devices to communicate is something we do every day. How does that affect into the way people using speech conversion will interact with others? How to ease encounters between healthy population and the ones utilizing speech conversion to make it natural? Are there other potential use cases of converting speech in the name of equality?