Synthetic audio forecasts
- Published
You may have noticed the audio forecast in the BBC Weather app and wondered how it works. We are using the BBC's AI-generated synthetic voice to deliver a localised forecast for every postcode district (e.g W1A, CW8, SK4) in the UK. Read on if you’d like to know more.
The synthetic voice was created by recording 3,000 spoken sentences to create a natural-sounding voice clone which can read out a weather forecast, a news article or any other BBC data or text.
Using this synthetic voice we are able to transform the text data provided to us by meteorologists into a rich audio weather forecast.
We add atmospheric weather sounds from the BBC Sounds Effects library, external to give users an immediate sense of the weather before hearing any of the forecast, creating a richer experience.
Currently, the forecast you hear in the Weather app will depend on your BBC account postcode.
Your local audio forecast will update four times a day, every day.
