Google Acquires Phonetic Arts for Better Voice Input, Text-to-Speech

It looks like things are beginning to heat up in the realm of natural user interfaces as Google just recently acquired Phonetic Arts to have more natural sounding synthesis of voice. Google has been pursuing voice as part of its natural user interface strategy, and voice features have been found on mobiles and Android through Google Translate, Google Maps with Navigation, Voice Search, Voice Input, and Voice Actions. Now, with the Phonetic Arts acquisition, hopefully Google can inject some more realistic, human, and natural-sounding voice to its voice engines.