IBM Text to Speech

Convert text into natural-sounding speech in a variety of languages and voices

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Stack of documents scanning to speech

Overview

IBM Text to Speech is an API cloud service that enables you to convert written text into natural-sounding audio in a variety of languages and voices within an existing application or within watsonx Assistant. Give your brand a voice and improve customer experience and engagement by interacting with users in their native language. Increase accessibility for users with different abilities, provide audio options to avoid distracted driving, or automate customer service interactions to eliminate hold times.
Improves user experience

Help all customers comprehend your message by translating written text to audio.
Boosts contact resolution

Solve customer issues faster by providing key information in their native language.
Protects your data

Enjoy the security of IBM’s world-class data governance practices.
Truly runs anywhere

Built to support global languages and deployable on any cloud—public, private, hybrid, multicloud, or on-premises.

IBM Watson Text to Speech is now available as a containerized library for IBM partners to embed AI technology in their commercial applications.

Learn more
Feature highlights Real-time speech synthesis

Provide multilingual, natural-sounding support.

 A unique voice for your brand

Create a branded voice with Premium.

 Leader in AI and ML

Benefit from IBM Research in AI and machine learning.

 Natural-sounding neural voices

Benefit from our deep neural networks trained on human speech to automatically produce smooth and natural sounding voice quality.

 Custom voices

Design your own unique branded neural voice modeled after your chosen speaker using as little as one hour of recordings. Premium feature.

 Controllable speech attributes

Easily adjust pronunciation, volume, pitch, speed and other attributes using Speech Synthesis Markup Language.

 Customized word pronunciations

Clarify the pronunciation of unusual words with the help of IPA or the IBM SPR.

 Expressiveness

Control tone of voice by choosing a specific speaking style: GoodNews, Apology, and Uncertainty.

 Voice transformation

Personalize voice quality by specifying attributes such as strength, pitch, breathiness, rate, timbre, and more.

Use cases

Watson Text to Speech Use Case Customer Self-Service
Customer self-service

Answer common call center queries using a Watson-powered virtual assistant on the phone.
Watson Text to Speech Use Case Call Analytics
Call analytics

Improve call center performance by mining conversation logs to quickly and accurately identify emerging call patterns, customer complaints, sentiment, non-compliant behavior and more.
Watson Text to Speech Use Case Agent Assist
Agent assist

Boost agent productivity and success with real time assistance during calls using AI-powered document and intranet search. As the agent is speaking with a customer, Watson listens in on the conversation, transcribes the audio, searches for relevant content within documentation, and feeds the answer back to the agent within seconds.
Watson Text to Speech Use Case Customer Self-Service
Customer self-service

Answer common call center queries using a Watson-powered virtual assistant on the phone.
Watson Text to Speech Use Case Call Analytics
Call analytics

Improve call center performance by mining conversation logs to quickly and accurately identify emerging call patterns, customer complaints, sentiment, non-compliant behavior and more.
Watson Text to Speech Use Case Agent Assist
Agent assist

Boost agent productivity and success with real time assistance during calls using AI-powered document and intranet search. As the agent is speaking with a customer, Watson listens in on the conversation, transcribes the audio, searches for relevant content within documentation, and feeds the answer back to the agent within seconds.

Partner with IBM

Accelerate your business growth as an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) by innovating with IBM. Partner with us to deliver enhanced commercial solutions embedded with AI to better address clients’ needs.

 Explore ways to accelerate your growth with IBM Build AI-based solutions faster with IBM embeddable AI

Case study

Woman using mobile phone taking notes in front of laptop.
Insurance bot helps customers in crisis

CodeObjects eliminates hold times by eliminating policyholder requests and transactions. 

 Read more

Ways to buy

Lite
  • Free
  • Everything you need to get started. Use 10,000 characters per month at no cost.
 Start for free Standard
  • As low as USD 0.02 per thousand characters
  • Ideal for businesses. Gain unlimited characters, high-value features and guaranteed uptime. 
 Buy now Premium
  • Contact us for pricing
  • Provides large and security-sensitive firms with more capacity and data protection. The Premium version includes custom-branded neural voice and a 99.9% high availability and service level uptime guarantee. 
 Deploy Anywhere
  • Contact us for pricing
  • Deploy behind your firewall or on any cloud with the flexibility of IBM Cloud Pak for Data. The Deploy Anywhere version includes unlimited characters per month, 35 neural voices, and 16 supported languages and dialects. 

Resources

API reference

Leverage our enhanced security features to ensure that your data is isolated and encrypted end-to-end while in transit and at rest.

 Download SDKs

The Watson SDK repository in GitHub.

Data privacy and security

See documentation about our enhanced security features that ensure your data is isolated and encrypted end-to-end, while in transit and at rest.

 Support for your language or dialect

Neural Voices improve customer experience with a clear, crisp, natural sound, powered by deep neural networks.

 Create a voice-enabled chatbot

Use the text-to-speech service to convert incoming text from watsonx Assistant to a voice response for the user to hear over the phone.

 Customizable text-to-speech on OpenShift

Walk through the steps to install a customizable text-to-speech service in Red Hat OpenShift

 AI-based solutions

Build AI-based solutions faster with IBM embeddable AI

Related products

IBM Speech to Text
Transform voice into written text with powerful machine learning technology.
watsonx Assistant
Solve customer issues the first time using an AI virtual assistant across any application, device, or channel.
IBM Speech Libraries for Embed
Infuse powerful natural language AI into commercial applications with a containerized library designed to empower IBM partners with greater flexibility.

Take the next step

See IBM Text to Speech capabilities in action.

 Start a free trial Explore the demo
More ways to explore Community Documentation Partner with IBM