Clearly, there is an increasing demand for AI-driven tools that enhance accessibility and user engagement across various sectors, including education, healthcare, and customer service. In the text-to-speech market, which was valued at about $3.45 billion in 2023, market experts are projecting it to reach over $21 billion by 2032.
This is because AI text-to-speech tools are becoming more sophisticated. And these days, it’s difficult to draw clear-cut boundaries between genuine human speech and synthesized speech. This has the potential for very broad application possibilities, especially for business leaders and their organizations.
In this article, we will explore some of the top AI text-to-speech tools available today and examine their features and how to effectively utilize them to meet diverse needs. Are you ready?
1. ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs was co-founded in 2022 by an ex-Google machine learning engineer and it launched the beta version of its text-to-speech technology for businesses the next January. Since then, it has launched a wide selection of AI text-to-speech products that cater to both free and commercial users.
So far, ElevenLabs supports 32 languages, and even though this doesn’t sound like much, what really makes the product stand out is the emotional and contextual awareness of its AI voices. In simple terms, this means that the available AI voices can adapt their delivery to align with the emotional tone of the text.
This allows listeners to have a more natural and engaging listening experience, making ElevenLabs products ideal for various applications like audiobooks, video voiceovers, and commercials. It also offers a free mobile app, ElevenReader, for narrating articles and other text content.
2. Speechify
Speechify offers more languages and more voices than ElevenLabs, which is not surprising since the latter is more consumer-focused. Using Speechify, users can listen to text from various sources, including PDFs, Google Docs, news articles, emails, books, websites, etc. And there are also apps for web, iOS, Android, Chrome, and Mac.
The apps sync features and playlists, allowing users to easily pick up where they left off on any device. In addition, it offers voice cloning; that is, users can create custom voices of themselves or others and then listen to text in their own voices or that of, say a loved one. More so, the cloned voice can even be made to speak a different language.
In all, Speechify is quite a versatile speech synthesis technology product. It also has a text-to-speech API for developers, and so on.
3. Murf
Some weeks ago, Murf AI launched its latest product/feature: MultiNative, which consists of speech synthesis technology voices that can switch across languages. As the announcement put it, the launch “completes brand revamp on 4-year anniversary.” Murf, after quietly getting on the AI audio scene four years ago, has spent the past several months refining its brand.
First, it introduced its second-generation TTS model, Murf Speech Gen 2, which produces voices nearly indistinguishable from human speech. The model operates at a 44.1kHz sampling rate, which captures the full range of human hearing, and that’s how the company accomplishes this effect, showcasing the latest breakthroughs in speech synthesis technology.
Besides its technical proficiency, Murf is also a very user-friendly tool. It simplifies the reading-aloud process whether you want to narrate PDFs, books, web pages, or other kinds of text. There’s a free online TTS converter for quick voice generation, while paid users can access the studio for advanced features.
4. NaturalReader
NaturalReader boasts a vast library of over 200 AI voices across tens of languages. It has been one of the most popular AI text-to-speech tools in the App Store (there’s also a bestselling Android version in the Play Store). Its AI voices are context-aware and this gives them a more natural and expressive delivery.
NaturalReader also offers a separate class of voices it calls “LLM (Large Language Model) AI voices”, which are higher-quality multilingual voices. These voices support about 28 languages, optimizing the platform as a text-to-speech technology for businesses. Users can purchase plans from their preferred subscription tier: personal, commercial, and educational.
5. Amazon Polly
Unlike the other AI text-to-speech tools in this article, Amazon Polly is rather geared towards developers specifically. In fact, it is a fully managed cloud service, and it excels on the technical front, too. New users get 5 million characters per month for a full year, which is quite generous.
The best feature of Amazon Polly text-to-speech technology for businesses is that it offers amazing customization options. For instance, users can use custom lexicons to modify pronunciations. Also, Polly supports Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) tags that allow users to fine-tune aspects of speech, like emphasis, intonation, phrasing, and so on.
In addition, as data privacy is a very important matter these days, Amazon Polly is huge on security and control. So, for instance, users can store their generated speech in common audio formats like MP3 and OGG securely without additional costs. And there are caching options that enhance speed and accessibility.
What makes Amazon Polly so robust is that its underlying technology is the same as the one powering Alexa. So, this is some very capable technology.
Supercharge Your Organization
AI text-to-speech tools have very wide applications for businesses and startups. They can enhance customer support, facilitate audio content creation, make digital content more accessible, help develop e-learning modules, support multilingual communication, and more.
As a business leader, learn more about all the ways you can supercharge your organization with the technologies of now and the future by following StartUp Growth Guide.
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