What's new and changed in Watson Speech services

Watson Speech services updates can include new features and fixes. Releases are listed in reverse chronological order so that the latest release is at the beginning of the topic.

You can see a list of the new features for the platform and all of the services at What's new in IBM Software Hub.

Installing or upgrading Watson Speech services

Ready to install or upgrade Watson Speech services?

  • To install Watson Speech services along with the other IBM® Software Hub services, see Installing IBM Software Hub.
  • To upgrade Watson Speech services along with the other IBM Software Hub services, see Upgrading IBM Software Hub.
  • To install or upgrade Watson Speech services independently, see Watson Speech services.
    Remember: All of the IBM Software Hub components associated with an instance of IBM Software Hub must be installed at the same version.

IBM Software Hub Version 5.4.0

A new version of Watson Speech services was released in June 2026 with IBM Software Hub 5.4.0.

Operand version: 5.4.0

This release includes the following changes:

New features
This release of Watson Speech services includes the following features:
New Dutch and Italian large speech models
You can now use the following large speech models with Watson Speech services:
  • Dutch (Netherlands) (nl-NL)
  • Italian (Italy) (it-IT)
For details, see Large speech languages and models.
Updates
The following updates were introduced in this release:
Back up and restore Watson Speech services data offline
You can now create offline backups of your Watson Speech services data and restore them as needed. During the backup process, IBM Software Hub temporarily pauses services to ensure data consistency. External operations are unavailable while the backup completes. Use this feature to maintain copies of your speech services data for recovery purposes.
Customer-reported issues fixed in this release
For a list of customer-reported issues that were fixed in this release, see the Fix List for IBM Cloud Pak for Data on the IBM Support website.
Security issues fixed in this release
The following security issues were fixed in this release:

CVE-2026-1839, CVE-2026-24880, CVE-2026-25854, CVE-2026-27205, CVE-2026-29129, CVE-2026-29145, CVE-2026-29146, CVE-2026-32990, CVE-2026-34073, CVE-2026-34483, CVE-2026-34487, CVE-2026-34500, CVE-2026-35469, CVE-2026-35535, CVE-2026-39892

CVE-2025-71176

Deprecated features
The following features were deprecated in this release:
Tune by Example
The Tune by Example beta feature is now deprecated.
  • API changes: The APIs for creating new prompts or speaker models are no longer supported.
  • Existing users: Current customizations containing prompts or speaker models will continue to work for speech synthesis for a limited time. However, no new prompts or speaker models can be created.
  • New users: The APIs are disabled and cannot be used to create prompts or speaker models.
This feature will be fully removed in a future release. After removal, speech synthesis using customizations that rely on prompts or speaker models will no longer be supported.