In short: Amazon has moved entirely to neural TTS (Polly). Maintaining the old concatenative synthesis system (which Eric used) is not commercially viable. However, there is a slim chance that Amazon might release a "classic" voice pack as a novelty—but no announcements exist.
Ivona Eric represents a mature concatenative TTS system that achieves high intelligibility and moderate naturalness. While superseded by neural TTS, it remains a benchmark for non-neural synthesis. Future research could explore user preference in low-resource or privacy-sensitive offline environments. ivona eric text to speech
Some older Windows software bundles still include Ivona voices (including Eric) as SAPI 5-compatible engines. These can be used on Windows 7, 8, or 10 with specific legacy installers. In short: Amazon has moved entirely to neural TTS (Polly)
For Android (legacy only):
How does Eric hold up today?
In short: Amazon has moved entirely to neural TTS (Polly). Maintaining the old concatenative synthesis system (which Eric used) is not commercially viable. However, there is a slim chance that Amazon might release a "classic" voice pack as a novelty—but no announcements exist.
Ivona Eric represents a mature concatenative TTS system that achieves high intelligibility and moderate naturalness. While superseded by neural TTS, it remains a benchmark for non-neural synthesis. Future research could explore user preference in low-resource or privacy-sensitive offline environments.
Some older Windows software bundles still include Ivona voices (including Eric) as SAPI 5-compatible engines. These can be used on Windows 7, 8, or 10 with specific legacy installers.
For Android (legacy only):
How does Eric hold up today?