The comment: I noticed that your demo video also had "emotional" video layered on top of the dialogue. This could be considered manipulative; perhaps consider sharing a naked version so we could attempt to interpret the emotion based solely on the text to speech engine.
The question: You mention you met at EF. I was wondering if, beyond bringing you together, you found EF to be worth the cost of admission?
Close your eyes
I thought the demo was impressive, but these things do seem like an effort to distract from (or more accurately bolster the effect of) the core technology.
Though maybe the right call since this is less a strict technical demo and more a way to drive interest/marketing.
The 'high levels of expressivity' comment was more of a flag to me, it's a meaningless phrase alone but it's suggested as an obvious answer. It feels like a mysterious answer [0].
I recognize though this is a marketing video, the core tech demo is cool, and I'm probably being unfairly critical. Flags like that make me more skeptical than I would otherwise be by default.
[0]: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/5uZQHpecjn7955faL/p/6i3zToomS86o...
As others have said, this is first and foremost a marketing video aimed at attracting target customers. We've got additional clean samples (without background music) further down on our homepage and we plan on adding even more on their own subpage of the site in the future. We've also done a few technical demos at conferences over the past year and will continue to do so.
We did meet at EF and it was totally worth it! There is no cost of admission for EF, they actually pay you to complete the program! Granted the monetary funds they provide could be a heck of a lot less than what you are earning at a full time job, so everyone's opportunity cost is different. EF's biggest selling point is their world-class network of highly ambitious individuals, so if you're interested in founding a company (pre-team / pre-idea) I would absolutely recommend looking into it.