Is "s" in "fails" pronounced s or z?

AI is not a reliable source. "Fails" ends in a Z sound.

Copilot is wrong.

It is pronounced like a Z. Copilot's explanation doesn't even make sense according to its own logic. It is correct that the pronunciation of the final S is determined by voiced or unvoiced sounds at the end of the word, but vowel sounds *are* voiced, meaning the following S *would* be pronounced like a /z/, not an /s/ as it says. This is of course not to mention the fact that "fail" obviously doesn't end with a vowel sound anyway, but an /l/, which the AI specifically mentions as an example of a voiced sound.

AI language models are built to recreate convincing responses from their corpus of training data, they are fundamentally incapable of knowing whether they’re saying anything right or wrong.

It is with a z sound. But a similar word, "failsafe" which also has a voiced L has a s sound because it is serving as the s for "safe".

Thanks everyone for your opinions

I always thought it's s as a native speaker... this comment section has taught me otherwise

the s tries to become z but sometimes it... fails

Copilot just crashed the plane into the side of a mountain.

AI isn’t always 100% correct. You’d better rely on a dictionary.

In general, *-s* following a voiced sound is voiced too. If you can put your fingers on your throat and feel your vocal cords vibrate as you get to *-s*, they keep vibrating.

I say it voiceless but most say it voiced.

It's not a very uncommon word, if you're able to ask an AI for a (wrong) answer, you're able to look up literally any media that mentions the word from a native speaker.

By its own logic, it should end on a /z/ sound. Vowels making consonant voiceless? Sounds like magic to me.

You were correct /z/ sound this time for an **S** after **L**, but remember add an **E** and it changes to /s/ as in false, pulse, else, etc.

as a native i say fails with a s. it may depend on your accent

Copilot doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Literally. Ever. It’s a bullshit generator, not something that actually understands anything.

Z

Copilot literally contradicts itself. The first says it’s fail/s/, then the second paragraph says it’s fail/z/. It is a z sound.

This is a perfect example of why you shouldn't ask AI questions.

Weird responses here. Fails on its own ends in /s/, followed by a consonant, /s/, followed by a vowel it turns into /z/. Cambridge English pronouncing dictionary even lists /s/ and /z/. She fails /s/ She fails /z/ often. She fails /s/ because of me.

Does end vowels in casual english actually exist?

Copilot is contradicting itself It's pronounced /z/.

I would not trust AI for most things related to language speaking. They are usually pretty bad at linguistics. They can be good for direct translation though.

Serious question: can native English speakers hear the difference between S and Z in a sentence? I find it so hard, I can’t hear the difference but I’m not a native English speaker.

Some places, like where im from, pronounce it interchangeably. I personally pronounce it with an s sound, but I think z is more popular. Either way, no one really cares, we'll understand either

Text generators are only kinda good for one thing: generating texts. It'll give you words, but they are unreliable in their content.

The final <-s> in verb forms or plurals of nouns is pronounced /z/ unless it is immediately preceded by an unvoiced consonant (like /p t k f θ/) where it is pronounced /s/.

I am a big AI user, but I urge you not to use it to learn languages in this way. It is often confidently wrong.

Z.

AI is a language model, it doesn’t really know anything It got facts from the internet "/s/ is voiced if the previous sound is voiced eg /b/ /d/ /g/ /l/". So according to its own rule fails should have a voiced s. Yet because language models doesn’t actually think and just writes what is "likely" to occur it can’t really even apply its own rule to the word you gave. "Fails" having an /s/ sound because it occurs after a vowel ? Makes no sense. There is no vowel phoneme there before the s. Secondly - there are words where s occurs after a vowel and *is* voiced. This occurs with the plural suffix after stridents. Eg. Busses, mazes, matches, badges. So the rule it came up with also makes no sense. Consult the internet for questions you have and if you can’t find anything then ask on a forum like this. Wiktionary also offers phonetic transcriptions for almost every word in different dialects. Please, do not use ai

I say "fails" with an s.