Home AI and ML Watson Text to Speech IBM Watson Text to Speech
Convert text into natural-sounding speech in a variety of languages and voices
Start your free trial Explore the demo
Stack of documents on platform connected to sound bars
What is IBM Watson Text to Speech?

IBM Watson 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.

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

Benefits 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.

Feature highlights What sets Watson Text to Speech apart? Everything you need to get started. 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

Customer self-service Answer common call center queries using a Watson-powered virtual assistant on the phone.

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.

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.

Interactive demo
Experience the difference Explore the powerful capabilities of advanced AI, neural voices and voice customization in our interactive demo. Go to the live demo
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
Find out more

Build AI-based solutions faster with IBM embeddable AI

Ways to buy

Get started for free or explore a demo

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.

Read more
Download SDKs

The Watson SDK repository in GitHub.

Go to 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.

Learn more
Support for your language or dialect

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

Read more
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.

Read more
Customizable text-to-speech on OpenShift

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

Read more
Related products Watson 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.

Watson 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 Watson Text to Speech capabilities in action.

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