Text to Speech with Emotion Using AI Voice Generator

Emotion in text to speech is the biggest factor in determining realism of AI voice over generators. It signifies the AI model’s capability to learn from human speech and imitate the conveyed emotions, like happiness, anger, sorrow, and more, in the generated AI voice.

According to a 2017 report published by Voices, 77% of the spends on voice over jobs was allocated to entertainment and advertising industries, which require advanced capabilities to effectively portray emotions through voice.

The lack of emotiveness in text to speech has long been the biggest barrier for adoption in mainstream media applications. Over the years, however, it has become possible to create more engaging experiences using emotive AI voices.

What is Text to Speech with Emotions? 

The good news is, text to speech has evolved beyond the repetitive and robotic voices to deliver human-like language that voice emotions. This technology is helping creators communicate with their audience in a more expressive, authentic, and relatable manner. 

Digital communication now sounds more realistic with voices having greater depth and personality. These emotions can be carried across languages, ensuring consistency in global projects.  

Samples of Emotive Text to Speech 

At Murf AI, we create AI-powered text to speech voices that go beyond communication to express contextual emotions. Listed below are some examples of text to speech with emotions from Murf Studio.

To access the different styles for each voice on Murf Studio, simply click on the tab next to the voice with the default 'conversational' option and choose from the drop-down list of voice options based on your project needs. Currently, over 20 voices across different languages on Murf support multiple voice styles, including Miles, Ruby, Ken, and Ava.

The Emergence and Evolution of Text to Speech 

In 1961, one of the earliest versions of computer-generated voices was created at Bell Labs. The base language it used was English—an IBM 704 computer was used to synthesize the lyrics to the song Daisy Bell and sing it using synthetic technology. It was a historic moment for speech synthesis; this clip was also featured in the screenplay of the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Modern TTS systems today focus on delivering text to speech with emotions using complex algorithms backed by artificial intelligence and natural language processing.

Technologies Used to Incorporate Emotion in Synthetic Speech 

Deep Learning-based Models 

This model uses deep neural networks (DNNs) at the core and is generally trained on custom recorded speech and corresponding script data in a labeled fashion. While these models understand contextual emotions to some extent, researchers have also experimented with training them on text data containing emotion labels. 

Hidden Markov Models 

Popularly referred to as HMMs, these models utilize statistical parameters to produce the most probable speech waveform. Key parameters, such as prosody, duration, and vocal chord frequencies, are typically incorporated. Although this method gained considerable traction among researchers, the emotional expressiveness it offers remains restricted when compared to deep learning models.

Articulatory Synthesis 

In traditional articulatory speech synthesis, the model simulates the movement of the tongue, lips, vocal cords, and other articulatory organs to generate speech sounds. This approach enables more precise control over speech parameters, resulting in higher-quality and more intelligible synthetic speech. By integrating emotional models into the articulatory speech system, the synthetic voice can dynamically adjust its articulatory movements and prosodic features to match the desired emotional expression.

Concatenative Speech Synthesis 

This technique combines pre-recorded segments of human speech, known as “units,” to generate emotionally expressive synthetic speech. To achieve emotional expressiveness, the database contains recordings of the same text spoken with various emotional states, such as happiness, sadness, and others. These emotional variations are carefully labeled, allowing the system to search for the most suitable units based on the specified emotion.

Cross-Lingual Emotion Transfer in Synthetic Speech 

Transferring emotions across languages is one of the most challenging problems with synthetic speech technologies. The process involves two main steps: emotion embedding and voice synthesis.

In the emotion embedding phase, a model is trained to map emotions from one language to another. This involves learning the cross-lingual emotional representations and identifying how emotional cues in one language can be transferred to another.

Once the emotion embedding is established, the voice synthesis phase takes over. During this stage, a text to speech system generates speech using the input text and the target language while incorporating the transferred emotional features from the source language. By aligning the emotional characteristics of the two languages, the synthetic voice can accurately convey emotions across linguistic boundaries.

Use-Cases for TTS with Emotion 

The benefits of AI voice generators are tremendous, especially when the results have been enriched with human emotion. Emotive voices have widespread applications across various industries that can benefit from them:

eLearning 

Injecting TTS with emotion creates the right diction through realistic AI voices, which is required to make the course material more impactful, and aids retention and recall.

Listening to eLearning voiceovers that have the correct notes corresponding to human emotional speech makes the subject matter simulate the classroom environment when students listen to them.

Marketing and Advertising 

There was a time when businesses were scurrying to robotize their operations; today, while that surge for automation still exists, businesses are looking to humanize their automated customer fronts.

They do this by applying emotion to voiceovers for advertising, using advanced TTS software that enables them to produce human-like voices to convey their intended message and establish a strong brand voice.

Content Creators

For those working in entertainment, it’s important to create videos at a steady pace with high-quality dubs. It’s here that voice overs for YouTube videos shine best—by providing content creators with a highly expressive set of synthetic voices that enables them to get even more creative with the content they produce.

Audiobooks and Podcasts 

A natural process happens in the human mind when reading a book—it automatically emotes the words being read. TTS with emotion that are used as voiceovers for audiobooks to deliver a more immersive listening experience for the audience.

Speaking of podcasts, they’re simply a form of blog or conversations that are in audio format rather than written. Using expressive voice over for podcasts helps make them sound more humanized.

Best Solutions for AI Text to Voice with Emotions 

The text to speech industry is teeming with software that provides lifelike synthesized voices with a variety of voice styles for various purposes. The leading TTS solutions are listed below.

1. Murf AI

Murf is a powerful text to speech tool especially beneficial for creative voiceovers that need a lot of customizations. It provides you with a set of pre-recorded realistic voices that are lifelike. Murf Speech Gen 2, a state-of-the-art neural TTS, produces voices indistinguishable from human speech. Simply put, it captures every nuance and every subtlety of the human voice range. Moreover, its Text-to-Speech API enables natural sounding voiceovers for chatbots, virtual assistants, virtual reality systems, metaverse games, automobiles, public announcements, IVR and more.

 Features 

• Text to speech with emotion using 120+ AI-generated voices in over 20 languages
• Pitch, intonation, volume, emphasis, speed, and pause adjustments
• Narrates PDFs, books, web pages, Word docs, news, and emails, among others
• Can be used for script proofreading, adding background music, clip editing, and more
  ‍

Pros 

• High customizability of your projects using voice adjustments
• Create studio-quality voiceovers at a fraction of the cost
• Quick turnaround times
• Easy and simple interface
  ‍

Pricing 

• Free plan available 
• Lite (Creator): $19 per user per month 
• Plus (Business): $66 per user per month 
  ‍

*Check pricing page for the updated pricing information and more details.

2. Typecast

Typecast's free text-to-speech with emotion tool makes voiceovers accessible for anyone, from Youtubers to professional content creators. You can use it to customize a voice's emotional expression, and fine-tune its intensity to match your desired style. Don’t like the output it created? Simply regenerate a new one at no extra cost.

Features 

• Over 20 languages to choose from, including English, Spanish, and Chinese
• 510+ AI voice actors, ranging from silly and fun to serious and professional
• Helps save time while you create your content with realistic AI voice overs
  ‍

Pros 

• Eliminates the need for equipment or studio time
• Vast character library
• Control aspects like emotion, pitch, and speed of the speech
  ‍

Pricing 

• Limited free plan available
• Basic: $8.99 per month
• Pro: $32.99 per month
• Business: $89.99 per month
  ‍

3. Revoicer

If you’re looking for a 100% online app to do your voiceovers, Revoicer is what you need. The average time to produce a voiceover with this app is just one minute. What makes it so popular among its 15000+ users is that its online text to speech with emotion engine is powered by “NewGen AI,” which means you work with the latest technology. 

Features 

• More than 80 human-like AI text to speech voices
• Works in English and over 40 other languages
• Easily customize voice type, pitch, and speed
  ‍

Pros 

• Intuitive interface
• Update your voiceovers anytime at zero additional cost
• Compatible with all video editing software
•  Suitable for beginners
  ‍

Pricing 

• Revoicer PRO: $47 per month
• Revoicer Standard: $67 per month
• Revoicer Agency: $127 per month
  ‍

4. Speechify 

Speechify is your ready-to-go text to speech software that allows the conversion of any text into speech. It gives you the capability to add a TTS button to any app or website you are using for quick audio outputs. Further, it allows AI summarization, voice cloning with emotion, natural-sounding speech, and is compatible across Chrome Extension, iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows. 

Features

• Reading speed adjustments up to 4.5x
• Human-like AI voices that are high quality in over 60 languages
• Enjoy over 200 human-like voices or clone your voice
• ‘Scan and Listen’ feature allows users to snap a pic of any page and have Speechify read it aloud
  ‍

Pros 

• Press-and-play TTS software
• Offers OCR functionality 
• Can be integrated with any screen from where you want the text read
• Easy to use
  ‍

Pricing 

• Free plan available with 10 voices
• Premium: $11.58 per user per month
  ‍

5. Speechelo 

Speechelo is one of the most straightforward text to speech tools for generating AI audio. It allows you to convert text to speech with emotion in just three steps. The platform is best suited for sales, training, and educational voiceover content creation.

Features 

• Support for over 23 languages and 30 voices
• Online text editor available
• Breathing, speed, pitch adjustment, tone, and pause features are available
  ‍

Pros 

• Compatible with any kind of video creation tool
• Get full training, and free lifetime support and updates
• 60-day money-back guarantee
  ‍

Pricing 

• No free plan available
• One-time payment purchase for $47 (after discount)
  ‍

6. NaturalReader 

NaturalReader is an online text to speech tool for personal, commercial, and educational use. It supports over 20 types of text formats for easy audio conversions. It is perfect for YouTube videos, training modules, eLearning, audiobooks, and any other public or business use.

Features 

• Commercial audio files are licensed for use on any public redistribution platform
• Emotions and voice effects 
• 50+ Languages and 200+ A.I. voices
• Quick conversions through drag-and-drop features
  ‍

Pros 

• Cross-platform compatible: Log in through any device or channel with your user ID
• LLM-based, content-aware AI voices for more natural, human-like TTS with emotion 
• Chrome extension available
  ‍

Pricing 

• Free version available
• Plus plan for single user access:
  • Monthly - $20.90 per month
  • Annual - $119 per year
    ‍
    
• For group subscriptions: 
  • Premium EDU: $199 per year onwards
  • Plus EDU: $299 per year onwards
    ‍

7. Azure Text to Speech 

Azure Text to Speech is a voiceover generation tool by Microsoft that’s available to try for free for Azure users. The tool is highly technical and most suitable for business use cases. 

Features 

• Over 400 neural voices in 140 languages
• Rate, pitch, pauses, and pronunciation adjustments
• Deployed over the cloud, on-premises, or in containers
• Adds emotions to any AI voice
  ‍

Pros 

• Several styles of speaking, like shouting, whispering, newscast, customer service, and more
• Customize speech in your app for your domain, or give your Copilot a branded voice
• Real-time, multi-language speech to speech translation, and speech to text transcription of audio
• Summarize key topics and extract or redact personal identification information.
  ‍

Pricing 

Available on a pay-as-you-go basis

8. Play HT

‍

Play.HT’s Peregrine is an ultra-realistic text to speech model which has been designed to generate the most expressive and emotional speech, and imitate a human voice as realistically as possible. Apart from speaking in thousands of languages, it can learn the various nuances of human speech like emotion, tone, even laughter in a self-supervised manner.

Features 

• Available in Beta for all users 
• Employs the same concept as large language models such as Dalle and GPT-2
  ‍

Pros 

• Voice cloning with emotion can be done with less than 30 seconds of recorded audio from a single speaker
• No need for transcripts or multi-speakers
• Generate an infinite number of voice variations, emotions, and styles
  ‍

Pricing 

• Free plan available
• Creator: $39 per month
• Unlimited: $99 per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing available
  ‍

Why Is Murf the Best Text to Speech with Emotions? 

When it comes to imbuing emotion into audio generated artificially, Murf is your best option because of the following reasons:

• Murf Studio allows you to adjust not only the pitch and style of speaking but also control pauses and add emphasis to certain words or phrases. This helps create better outputs.
• Add the exact emotion your content needs using Murf’s dynamic voice styles. Choose from options like excited, sad, angry, calm, terrified, friendly, and more.
• An extensive library of realistic synthetic voices closes the gap between AI and real voices.
• Murf Speech Gen 2, our 2nd generation model, is a state-of-the-art neural TTS that produces voices that are indistinguishable from human speech. Operating natively at a 44.1kHz sampling rate, our text to speech with emotion tool can capture every nuance and range of the human voice.
  ‍

Murf has several other key features like use-case-based voices in countless accents to allow users further customizations.

Visit Murf to understand more amazing capabilities of this TTS tool!