These computer voices sound human enough to mislead, but one layer of speech still breaks the illusion

We are surrounded by computer-generated voices these days, from navigation systems and voice assistants to automated announcements. But how human do these voices actually sound? A recent study by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, published in the journal Speech Communication, shows that our perception is affected by three things: how something is said, what is being said, and whether we understand the language.