AVSE CHALLENGE: AUDIO-VISUAL SPEECH ENHANCEMENT CHALLENGE

Audio-visual speech enhancement is the task of improving the quality of a speech signal when video of the speaker is available. It opens-up the opportunity of improving speech intelligibility in adverse listening scenarios that are currently too challenging for audio-only speech enhancement models. The Audio-Visual Speech Enhancement (AVSE) challenge aims to set the first benchmark in this area. We provide participants with datasets and scripts to test their audio-visual speech enhancement models under a common framework for both training and evaluation. The data is derived from real-world videos, and comprises noisy mixes, in which audio from target speaker is mixed with either a competing speaker or a noise signal. The submitted systems are evaluated by conducting AV intelligibility tests involving human participants. We expect this challenge to be a platform for advancing the field of audio-visual speech-enhancement and to provide further insight about the scope and limitations of current AV speech enhancement approaches.