As a business person, your topmost priority is, without a doubt, to enhance the user experience. Organizations are eager to support smooth operations irrespective of the core technologies or expense. Every part of the internet world is built with a minimalist perspective, whether it be a website, software, or online service.
This demand has paved the way to text-to-speech assistive technology which renders it even more comfortability.
Speech synthesis solutions are in higher demand than ever before. Speech synthesis is used by corporations, movie studios, game companies, and online influencers to speed up and minimize the cost of content creation while also improving the user experience.
The text-to-speech market is expected to reach $7 billion by 2028 with a CAGR of 14.7%. With that number, you can imagine how useful it is for everyone.
In this article, we will talk about text-to-speech technology and everything else about it.
What is Text-to-Speech Technology?
Text-to-speech is a type of assistive technology that reads out loud digital text. It is also known as ‘read aloud’ tech. Text-to-speech is a machine learning-based computer program of vocalization generated from a textual description. Developers typically employ text-to-speech to create speech bots. Interactive Voice Response or IVR is an example of it.
It wasn’t always so efficient in the early days of text-to-speech. TTS was created to help the visually handicapped by providing a computer-generated audible voice to ‘read’ material to them. Another early use of this technology was to assist persons who had difficulty reading.
Text-to-speech saves a company time and money by producing sound automatically, removing the need to record (and rewrite) sound clips physically. This driver technology enables you to convert digital words into audio with just the click of a button.
There are two approaches that developers can take to do this:
Concatenative gluing is the process of joining audio fragments together. This synthesized speech is of good quality, but machine learning requires a large amount of data.
Developing a probabilistic system that chooses the acoustic qualities of a sound stream for a particular text is known as parametric analysis. This method can be used to create a speech that is nearly indistinguishable from that of a genuine person.
The use of text-to-speech technology by businesses to enhance sales is on the rise. This is a major driver driving business expansion.
KFC celebrated National Fried Chicken Day in July 2019 by modernizing the drive-through experience. During the campaign, a voice-activated ‘Colonel Sanders’ gave drive-through consumers the hilarious experience of purchasing from the real Colonel Sanders.
During the campaign, voice recognition, artificial intelligence, and text-to-speech were used to make KFC’s drive-through operator’s voice sound like Col. Sanders’ southern accent.
The text-to-speech industry is divided into two categories based on the deployment model. These are on-premise and cloud.
The emergence of cloud-based text-to-speech services is an important driver driving market expansion. User applications or software can send text and obtain audio files that can be played back on Internet-enabled apps and devices using cloud-based technologies.
High-quality voice in a variety of languages is one of the features of cloud-based technology. It has improved IT security and expandability. It also allows access to services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Here’s a simplified overview of how text-to-speech technology generally works
The quality of synthetic speech has greatly improved because to developments in deep learning and neural network techniques, giving modern TTS systems a more realistic and human-like voice. These technologies are used in many different applications, including navigation systems, voice assistants, and accessibility tools.
- Text Analysis:
- The process begins with the analysis of the input text. This involves breaking down the text into smaller linguistic units, such as phonemes, words, and sentences.
- Text Preprocessing:
- The text may undergo preprocessing to improve pronunciation, correct grammatical errors, and handle special symbols or formatting.
- Linguistic Analysis:
- Linguistic analysis involves determining the syntactic and semantic structure of the text. This step helps in applying proper intonation, stress, and rhythm to the synthesized speech.
- Prosody Generation:
- Prosody refers to the patterns of stress and intonation in speech. TTS systems generate prosody to make the synthesized speech sound more natural. This includes variations in pitch, duration, and amplitude.
- Phoneme Mapping:
- Phonemes are the smallest units of sound in a language. TTS systems map linguistic units to corresponding phonemes. This mapping is crucial for generating accurate and natural-sounding speech.
- Acoustic Modeling:
- Acoustic models are used to represent the relationship between phonemes and the corresponding audio signals. These models are often based on large datasets of recorded human speech.
- Speech Synthesis:
- The actual synthesis of speech involves combining the linguistic and acoustic models. There are different methods for speech synthesis, including concatenative synthesis and parametric synthesis.
- Concatenative Synthesis: This method involves stitching together segments of pre-recorded human speech. The segments may be stored in a database, and the system selects and concatenates them to form the desired output.
- Parametric Synthesis: This method generates speech from mathematical models that represent the characteristics of human speech. Parametric synthesis allows for more flexibility and control over the generated speech.
- The actual synthesis of speech involves combining the linguistic and acoustic models. There are different methods for speech synthesis, including concatenative synthesis and parametric synthesis.
- Post-Processing:
- The synthesized speech may undergo post-processing to further enhance its naturalness. This can include adjusting pitch, speed, and adding additional effects.
- Output:
- The final output is an audio file or a real-time stream of synthesized speech that closely mimics natural human speech.
TTS works with nearly all personal electronic gadgets, such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Text files of all formats can be read aloud, especially Pages and Word documents. Even online content can be read out loud on the internet.
TTS makes use of computer-generated speech that can be ramped up or slowed down in most cases. The voices vary in quality, however, some do sound human. There are even computer-generated voices that sound like toddlers speak.
Several text-to-speech tools highlight words as they are read aloud. This allows children to simultaneously see and hear the text.
If you’re looking for a high-quality text-to-speech converter, there are various options available online.
Murf’s natural-sounding text to speech software uses more than 120 AI voices in nearly 20 languages. The best thing about it is that you cannot tell the difference between an AI voice and a human voice.
Artificial intelligence has progressed to the point where it can generate novel, creative answers to auditory data. Neural networks are crafting fresh things for the computer to say. They are not just collecting prescribed words. They have been trained on massive amounts of human speech, such as movie subtitles and Reddit posts.
They are picking up on communication styles and the kinds of things one person could say after another.
Benefits of Text-to-Speech Technology
- Enhance Visibility
Text-to-speech services cater to several of the world’s 774 million individuals who are struggling with language and 285 million people who have vision problems. Moreover, speech-enabled web content has no negative impact on non-disabled users’ accessibility. It benefits all other groups, particularly older consumers and non-native speakers.
- Better implement IoT
Text-to-speech is critical not just for the success of a website, but also for the future of businesses. The Internet of Things is becoming a significant element in digital business development.
Digital marketing tactics exist in many industries, and they center around engaging customers across multiple interconnected platforms to maximize how they interact with them. TTS, which has a unique omnichannel voice, allows consumers to experience digital content across several platforms.
- Word of mouth marketing
The user experience is improved by offering a new method to access the web content. When visitors have a positive experience on a site, they are considerably more likely to return and recommend it to others. Even in this day and age of digital marketing, word of mouth is still by far the most effective technique.
- Improve your brand image
The use of TTS technology throughout a company’s digital platforms contributes to the company’s CSR. Financial efficiency, brand image, sales, staff retention, and access to capital and investment have all been proved to benefit from CSR.
- Train your employees
TTS technologies should be employed by HR departments and e-Learning specialists to make it much smoother for staff to read learning classes and employee terms of preparation at any time and in any location.
How voice recognition technology can help your child
For students with reading difficulties, print objects in the classroom, such as books and handouts, might be a barrier. This is because some children have difficulty deciphering and comprehending printed words on the page. These hurdles can be overcome by combining digital text with TTS.
TTS also promotes a multimodal reading experience by allowing youngsters to see and hear text while reading. When reading, researchers discovered the combination of seeing and hearing the text.
Text to voice technologies can also be useful as assistive technology for people with learning difficulties, and they have a lot of potential in the classroom, the job, and in everyday life.
- TTS for the blind or visually impaired
- TTS for dyslexia
- TTS for kids
- TTS for training videos
- TTS for remote education
- TTS for video tutorials/demos
How speech recognition technology
- Improves word recognition
- Increases the ability to pay attention and remember information while reading
- Allows kids to focus on comprehension instead of sounding out words
- Increases kids’ staying power for reading assignments
- Helps kids recognize and fix errors in their own writing
Types of text to speech
There are a variety of TTS options available depending on the device your child uses:
Many gadgets feature built-in text-to-speech (TTS) capabilities. Chrome is compatible with desktop and laptop computers, as well as smartphones and digital tablets. This TTS may be used by your youngster without the need for any additional apps or software.
TTS tools on the web
Some websites have on-site TTS tools. For example, you can use the “Reading Assist” option on our website, which is found in the lower left corner of your screen, to have this webpage read aloud to you. Dyslexic children may also be eligible for a free Bookshare account, which includes digital books that may be read with TTS. TTS tools are also available for free on the internet.
Text-to-speech apps:
TTS apps are available for download on smartphones and tablets. Special features, such as text highlighting in various colours and OCR, are common in these programmes. Voice Dream Reader, Claro ScanPen, and Office Lens are just a few examples.
Tools for Chrome:
Chrome is a new platform with a number of TTS tools. Read&Write for Google Chrome and Snap&Read Universal are two of them. These utilities can be used on a Chromebook or any machine that runs the Chrome browser. More Chrome reading tools can be found here.
There are various literacy software applications available for desktop and laptop computers, including text-to-speech software. Many of these apps have TTS in addition to other reading and writing tools.
TTS is also included in Microsoft’s Immersive Reader product. It can be found in Microsoft Office apps such as OneNote and Word. More software for youngsters with reading problems can be found here.
Wrapping Up
That’s all for this article. Hopefully, now that you have read it, you have understood everything about text-to-speech technology and its benefits.
Text-to-speech technology and speech synthesis are two of the most advanced technological progress made possible by artificial intelligence. Speech computing goes beyond merely allowing a person to submit text to be read out loud by a machine and allows for the generation of entirely new synthetic sounds.
Using these sounds, people can relearn lost voices, speak with computers in increasingly realistic ways, and convert an infinite amount of language text into a natural-sounding voice.
You must start with the human voice in order to build a custom artificial voice. When creating a new voice for a business or a person, you’ll need access to a variety of sounds, including performers of all ages and dialects.
