History Main / RoboSpeak

* Website/GoAnimate famously has a wide array of text-to-speech voices for use in videos; while many of these sound perfectly fine, and even pretty good when given the 'right' sentences to read, their mechanical nature does shine through every once in a while; typing in AllCaps sometimes has the "Eric" [=TTS=] voice reading a sentence perfectly until it comes to the word 'It', which it reads out as if it were an initialism, while "Julie" speaks with an unusually higher tone for certain phrases, such as "That's it", "Goodbye" or "Let's go".

** "Software Automatic Mouth", or SAM, from the ''UsefulNotes/{{Commodore 64}}'' was perhaps the first true voice synthesizer, that is it actually was capable of saying ''anything'' rather than relying on a library of words it could pick and choose from. Unsurprisingly, it sounded ''frigging creepy'' and most people used it to say dirty words. [[https://discordier.github.io/sam/ Give it a try]].

** While not exactly monotone, E-102 Gamma from ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'' does sound calm at all times. He talks to himself a fair amount, and while this doesn't hinder him at all, it doesn't make much sense, outside of letting players and viewers in on his data processes. Oh yeah, and stock phrases: "Insufficient data." "Does not compute." "Accessing data."

*** [[MeaningfulName Yes Man]], a modified Securitron from ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' is another major avertion of the trope, as his dialogue is almost always cheerful and joyous (some lines do suggest he can be passive-aggressive toward the things he dislikes, however) and there are also some other modified Securitrons with more human-like dialogue.

** There was also one where the leader of the robot Mafia was trying to teach another robot a lesson. The robot starts begging (not in Robo Speak yet), "Look into your hard drive, and open your mercy file!" to which the leader of the robot Mafia said "File not found!" Granted, it was used more as a snappy comeback said in a normal tone, but he still reverted to a primitive phrasing to describe the "missing" file.

* ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

* The Marvel Transformers comics gave the titular robots stylized speech bubbles, originally rectangles with a little starburst in each corner. The bubble design was made much more elaborate for the Generation2 series.

* ''VideoGame/EarthBound'', to an extent. The Starmen (technically not robots but aliens) speak for the most part in normal English peppered with onomatopoeic machine sounds such as *whirr* and *click*. This is an invention of the localization, however; the original Japanese release differentiated the Starmen's robospeak by writing their dialogue entirely in katakana.

** Of all the robot characters on Megatron's toady Soundwave was the only Robo-Speaker, despite the fact that he transforms into a tape player, and would be expected to have an even firmer grasp of sound than the other characters -- he even frequently says "By your command," a Cylon CatchPhrase. Even his subordinates, who transform into the tapes he deploys from his chest, are more articulate; at least, those who aren't animals. Primitive Cybertronians with little intelligence tend to sound more like cavemen than Cylons (see the Dinobots, or any combiner team). On the other end of the scale, Autobots Jazz and Blaster not only eschew Robo Speak, but were virtually {{jive|Turkey}} characters, complete with large slang vocabularies.

* ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'':
** The Pokedex in the [[http://youtu.be/Xr67vSHoIeM?list=LLW82ekxV32euAvl8gwrFGlg Hebrew dub]] sounds very robotic.

* Illusion's H-game ''Artificial Girl 3'' has a variety of personalities the player can assign to a girl he creates, one of them ([[EmotionlessGirl the N type]]), has some Robo Speak lines like "Preparing to rest... shutting down... complete." and "Probability of pregnancy: 10%", the game even has the option of giving her [[UnusualEars robotic ears]] to fill the role better.

** Of course, needless to say, Ledgermayne lets out a rare and truly single non-Robo Speak exclaimation in the form of a BigNo when Drakath gives focuses his Chaos magic into the Supreme Arcane Staff, allowing the hero to use it to convert Ledgermayne back into the mass of mana from which it was made.

** When he goes to his "Rising" SuperMode, the driver turns it into ''four syllables.'' RI-I-SING-GU! You know you've got a bad case if it takes a viewer a while to realize that the device is actually speaking English. And ''so many Franchise/KamenRider'' computer voices speak in GratuitousEnglish, but in an understandable enough manner that the few words they get are coherent. ("[[Series/KamenRiderRyuki Final Vent!]]" "[[Series/KamenRiderFaiz Standing by. ... Complete]].")

* The [[MagicWand Devices]] in ''Franchise/LyricalNanoha'' combines this with SurprisinglyGoodEnglish and [[GratuitousGerman German]].

** When he goes to his "Rising" SuperMode, the driver turns it into ''four syllables.'' RI-I-SING-GU! You know you've got a bad case if it takes a viewer a while to realize that the device is actually speaking English. And ''so many Franchise/KamenRider'' computer voices speak in GratuitousEnglish, but in [[SurprisinglyGoodEnglish an understandable enough manner]] that the few words they get are coherent. ("[[Series/KamenRiderRyuki Final Vent!]]" "[[Series/KamenRiderFaiz Standing by. ... Complete]].")

* ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'':

* Father Tres, an android in ''LightNovel/TrinityBlood'', speaks this way, including using "Positive" for "Yes" and "Negative" for "No", and having little to no inflection. Preferred method of attack: [[MoreDakka a fusillade of bullets]] from GunsAkimbo.

Robots will also talk to each ''other'' in Robo Speak, a step ''backwards'' in technology since one would assume wireless communication between machines would be faster and stealthier. Killer cyborgs are always lurching about declaring "SER-CHING FOR HU-MANS!" and "THREAT DETECTED. MUST DESTROY!" -- how is this going to do anything but hinder them?

** [=RoboCop=] tends to straddle the trope, since he's basically a heavily armored robot powered by an actual human. By default, he speaks in Robospeak, but sometimes with some emotion thrown in. Stronger emotions, such as UnstoppableRage, come just shy of overriding the default monotone. He talks exclusively in this way right after his resurrection, but regains his former way of speaking over the course of the film. His voice still has a hint of electronic filtering, though. [[BadassBaritone This is not a bad thing.]]

Robots, androids, or any other artificially-intelligent machine with the ability to talk to humans very often do so in a flat MachineMonotone voice devoid of emotion, with machine-like gaps between each word and/or sentence. When using a language with contractions, such as English, a robot may often speak without contractions, even though a contraction would be one of the easiest parts of speech to program a computer to do correctly. Their speech also often includes numerous specialized computer-derived robotic StockPhrases, such as: "affirmative/negative" instead of "yes/no", "file not found", and the classic "does not compute" when [[LogicBomb confused]]. When written, it is often in ALL CAPS, possibly to evoke the feeling of old computers which didn't have enough memory for lower-case letters. (JapaneseMedia uses [[UsefulNotes/JapaneseWritingSystem katakana]] for similar reasons: old computers and video game cartridges didn't have ROM to spare for the thousands of characters a proper kanji font would include, and katakana is easier to read at lower graphical resolutions.) In illustrated media, robotic speech may be indicated by rectangular SpeechBubbles and/or [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recognition MICR]]-style lettering.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLorax'' features a cat version: a robot cat with a spy camera in it meows in a robotic way.

** There was also one where the leader of the robot Mafia was trying to teach another robot a lesson. The robot starts begging (not in Robo Speak yet), "Please, look into your hard drive, and access your mercy file!" to which the leader of the robot Mafia said "File not found!" Granted, it was used more as a snappy comeback said in a normal tone, but he still reverted to a primitive phrasing to describe the "missing" file.

* ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles3'': Segiri speaks in a stilted, almost monotone way, using precise wording and clear language. For bonus points, [[MechanicalLifeforms she is descended from Machina]] (though the Machina didn't speak like this in the previous game). It's implied that this is a result of her being raised as even more of a ChildSoldier than usual, a member of the SecretPolice trained to pepetuate the ForeverWar. This implication turns out to be ''completely wrong'', as no one else in her colony speaks like this. Even her identical twin sister speaks in a much more natural and emotive fashion.

--> '''Robo-Piñata:''' I AM FILLED WITH DELICIOUS CANDY. I AM NOT A TRICK.''

* The Pokedex in the [[http://youtu.be/Xr67vSHoIeM?list=LLW82ekxV32euAvl8gwrFGlg Hebrew dub]] of ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' sounds very robotic.

* "Joshua" of ''Film/WarGames'' speaks haltingly with very strange inflections on his words and a creepy warbly distortion. In real life this was done not with text-to-speech software ([[OlderThanTheyThink which did exist at the time]]) but by having his voice actor read his lines backward and then chopping it up and adding a filter: "Would you like to play a game" was read as "Game A Play To Like You Would" and then recut and distorted.

Robots, androids, or any other artificially-intelligent machine with the ability to talk to humans very often do so in a flat MachineMonotone voice devoid of emotion, with machine-like gaps between each word and/or sentence. When using a language with contractions, such as English, a robot may often speak without contractions, even though a contraction would be one of the easiest parts of speech to program a computer to do correctly. Their speech also often includes numerous specialized computer-derived robotic StockPhrases, such as: "affirmative/negative" instead of "yes/no", "file not found", and the classic "does not compute" when [[LogicBomb confused]]. When written, it is often in ALL CAPS, possibly to evoke the feeling of old computers which didn't have enough memory for lower-case letters. (JapaneseMedia uses [[UsefulNotes/JapaneseWritingSystem katakana]] for similar reasons: old computers and video game cartridges didn't have ROM to spare for the thousands of characters a proper kanji font would include, and katakana is easier to read at lower graphical resolutions).