Google has acquired speech synthesis company Phonetic Arts for an undisclosed sum in an effort to enhance its voice output (computer speech) services.

Cambridge-based Phonetic Arts' speciality is building technology that generates natural expressive speech for computer games, making computers capable of speaking any text in any voice. Google aims to integrate this technology into its products and services to enable it to translate text to speech and speak to users in natural voices.

For instance, Google Translate and its navigation products are already capable of speaking text or instructions.

In a blog post on the acquisition, Speech Technology manager Mike Cohen explains his vision for a Google world that more closely resembles Star Trek. "In Star Trek, they don’t spend a lot of time typing things on keyboards—they just speak to their computers, and the computers speak back," he says. "We’re confident that together [with Phonetic Arts] we’ll move a little faster towards that Star Trek future."

With this futuristic vision, we could find ourselves interfacing with Google in a more voice-centric fashion in the foreseeable future.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Coneee