Language models, especially Large Language Models (LLMs), have essentially become the face of AI. However, there’s an insidious problem with them. Thus far, the AI community has primarily trained its AI on text data while neglecting audio data. As a result, we’re holding our LLMs back, since we’re only teaching them how to read/write, but never teaching them how to speak/listen.
Thankfully, however, a few companies out there are in the process of ameliorating this issue. While we follow the path to more robust LLMs, we have created a few incredible products along the way. One such product is a series of incredible text-to-speech (TTS) models, each with its own unique strengths. We’ve listed the seven best TTS models of 2024 (so far).
If you’re building an app that requires a voice—from a new GPS system to a video game or even an IVR system—these apps are for you!
🧑🔬 ElevenLabs
ElevenLabs has been generating AI voices since 2022 with an emphasis on synthesizing speech that sounds as natural as possible in various languages. The video above showcases their technology’s skills with Spanish, English, German, Polish, and French.
Most recently, they released the ElevenLabs Dubbing Studio, enabling you to translate massive amounts of content for people all over the world. It supports 29 languages, and even the advertisement for the Dubbing Studio uses an ElevenLabs voice!
You can get started using ElevenLabs for free, and their API comes equipped with user-friendly documentation, guiding you on everything from Websockets to Streaming.
If you want to see ElevenLabs’ capabilities first-hand, click here.
Strengths: Extremely natural-sounding voices, unique dubbing studio
Most Common Use Cases: Videos, gaming, audiobooks, AI chatbots, general entertainment
🌶️ Deepgram
Deepgram’s Aura model is the pinnacle of Text-to-Speech for real-time conversations. If you’re creating an IVR system or AI Agents to handle real-time conversations at scale, Aura is undoubtedly the best choice for you. With less than 200ms latency, Deepgram’s TTS model is perhaps the fastest the AI world has ever seen.
The video above displays the model’s extremely fast response time in a replication of a few real-life phone calls. As you can see, the latency consistently remains below 0.2 seconds. So long story short, if you need speed for any kind of real-time application, Deepgram’s Aura has you covered!
Furthermore, Deepgram has the goal of crafting text-to-speech capabilities that mirror natural human conversations, including timely responses, the incorporation of natural speech fillers like 'um' and 'uh' during contemplation, and the modulation of tone and emotion according to the conversational context.
“Deepgram showed me less than 200ms latency today. That's the fastest text-to-speech I’ve ever seen. And our customers would be more than satisfied with the conversation quality."
- Jordan Dearsley, Co-founder at Vapi
Click here for additional examples of Deepgram Aura in action!
Strengths: Extremely fast, natural-sounding voices, minimal latency, high throughput, lifelike
Most Common Use Cases: Real-time AI Voice Agents, IVR, Conversational chatbots, Contact centers, entertainment
🔊 WellSaid Labs
If you’re an enterprise, then WellSaid Labs could be for you! Offering a variety of high-quality AI voices, your business will be able to save time and money creating top-tier content by using WellSaid Labs’ technology. From Boeing to Intel and even Peloton, your company could be next in line to use the latest enterprise-level TTS technology.
One unique feature of WellSaid Labs is the fact that you get to control the tone, punctuation, and emphasis of your message manually, allowing you to essentially finetune these language models without having to delve into the model weights themselves. So if you want greater agency over the output of your TTS model, WellSaid Labs has the product for you!
Learn more here.
Strengths: High customization ability, AI Avatars, Regionalization
Most Common Use Cases: Enterprise-level AI, Branded content, Marketing