How do computers talk with voices that sound like people?

– Sarah G٫ age 11٫ Seguin٫ TexasWhen you talk to computerized assistants like Siri or Alexa, they reply in voices that sound very human. it breaks each word into bits of sound called phonemes. Pieces to a puzzleOld computer voices often sounded robotic and choppy, like “He-llo-hu-man-I-am-a-com-pu-ter.” That includes everything from how people breathe to when they laugh and to how their voices sound higher when they get excited. These synthetic voices can sound almost identical to a real person’s voice by learning from a short sample of their speech.