Microsoft introduces Indian English, Hindi to Neural Text-to-Speech service

Neural TTS reduces listening fatigue when users are interacting with AI systems. Microsoft India has officially announced about the addition of new languages English (India) and Hindi to its Neural Text to Speech (Neural TTS) service language set, it will be featuring two languages, even 15 new dialects has been added to the service, and further enabled with state-of-the-art AI audio quality.

Neural TTS is basically a part of the Azure Cognitive Services and for a more natural interface, it converts text to lifelike speech. Further, this service also enables customisable voices, fine-tuned auto control, and flexible deployment from cloud to edge, it said.

Sundar Srinivasan, General Manager, Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt Ltd, said, “Our text-to-speech services have played a key role in democratising information reach and empowering people and organisations.”

Further added- “Through the inclusion of English (India) and Hindi in Neural TTS, we are demonstrating our continued commitment to refining speech and voice-based services for personal and business use in India.”

Microsoft’s Neural TTS can also be used to make interactions with chatbots and even virtual assistants more naturally. It can also convert digital texts such as e-books into audio books and used in-car navigation systems.

The other new languages introduced are Danish, Arabic (Egypt and Saudi Arabia) ,Catalan Finnish, Polish, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Thai, Swedish, and Chinese (Cantonese Traditional and Taiwanese Mandarin). Thus, Microsoft TTS overall supports 110 voices and more than 45 languages and variants, according to the IT firm.