The company that gave us Barney the Talking Dinosaur has teamed up with AT&T to come up with a new line of plush, robotic toys that work with personal computers and "Instant Messaging" (IM) software.

Los Angeles-based United Leisure Corporation Monday said its subsidiary, United Internet Technologies ("UIT"), is in a licensing agreement to use AT&T's Natural Voices Text-to-Speech (TTS) Engine.

The toys marketed as "Instant Messaging Buddies" can be placed near a PC and will speak written text from instant messages using wireless transfer links.

The TTS Engine is uses integrating pleasant-sounding voices on customer-facing applications including the use of personalizing regional dialects and accents.

"After researching the market for the best text-to-speech technologies, we were most impressed by the AT&T product," said UIT CEO Brian Shuster. "The AT&T voices were by far the most realistic that we have heard to date."

UIT did not say when the new toys would become available.

The toys use a UIT's technology called I-C-IT (Intelligent Control Interactive Technology). The hardware and software platform works with networking devices via the Internet and other networked environments.

AT&T Natural Voices TTS Engine is considered to be one of the most human-sounding computer-speech systems in the world. The product consists of a text-to-speech "engine" that turns written words into natural-sounding speech, a library of male and female voices in different languages,

New languages are scheduled for introduction approximately every three months and product enhancements are added on a regular basis. Since its introduction, AT&T Natural Voices products are quickly becoming an accepted standard by which all other TTS engines are measured.

Shuster says the I-C-IT platform could certainly be stretch beyond smart toys to include gaming applications, medical devices, and networked appliances.

"We believe that UIT can generate significant revenue from initial sales then again from subsequent software downloads," said Shuster. "UIT's embedded technology provides added value to portals and online communication venues creating a tremendous opportunity to generate revenue from sales of ancillary products including new languages, new phrases, games, educational software and more."

AT&T holds more than 150 patents in speech technologies. From the first synthesized speech system in 1939 to today, Ma Bell is a speech technology pioneer and has the lion's share of voice applications available today.