Scottish company brings Roger Ebert's voice back to life!

Just when America was starting to think that they'd never hear Film Critic Roger Ebert's voice again, it miraculously comes back. CereProc, a company from Edinburgh, was able to make Ebert's dreams come true when they fulfilled his request to have a text-to-speech synthesizer made (created by stitching together a bunch of audio clips of him talking when he used to have a voice), thus allowing him to simply type what he wants to say, which will then create a somewhat disjointed and detached version of his old voice.


Roger Ebert is famous for his role in At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper, but he got his start as a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times. He also became the first critic to win a Pullitzer Prize for Criticism, in 1975.

According to his statement to the Sun Times, Roger Ebert (The handsome man pictured on the left - photo courtesy of Harpo Productions) admitted that the idea was repeatedly suggested to him. "After I lost my speaking voice, everybody thought they had this brilliant idea. 'Hey! Why don't you just take your voice from your old shows and put it on a computer?'"

CereProc, the digital Necromancers in charge of bringing Ebert's voice back from the dead, were able to stitch together clips of audio from DVD commentaries that Ebert recorded back when he had a voice.

Now that he has (sort of) regained the power of his voice, he says that he plans on possibly using the voice for radio and webcasts.