Speech synthesis, also called text-to-speech (TTS), converts written text into spoken audio. It gives AI voice agents their voice, transforming generated responses into natural-sounding speech callers can hear.
How does speech synthesis work?
Modern neural TTS systems learn to generate speech from large datasets of recorded human voices. Given input text, they produce audio that captures natural prosody, intonation, and timing. Synthesis can be customized for different voices, speaking styles, and languages.
Why does speech synthesis matter?
The voice is the AI agent’s interface. Robotic, unnatural speech creates poor experiences regardless of how good the underlying AI is. High-quality synthesis that sounds human and conveys appropriate emotion is essential for voice AI that people want to interact with.
Speech synthesis in practice
A business selects a warm, professional voice for their AI agent and configures synthesis parameters. When the AI responds to callers, the speech sounds natural and matches the brand personality. Punctuation and markup in the generated text guide emphasis and pacing. Callers often do not realize they are speaking with an AI.