An AI voice generator is a specialized type of generative AI technology that enables users to create new voices or manipulate existing vocal audio with no audio engineering expertise. Instead, they simply insert text, or some other media, with requested parameters to direct the vocal generator to create a relevant voice or voice product.
In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at the five best AI voice generators available today, but first, here’s a glance at where each of these tools differentiates itself the most:
In addition to text-to-speech and voice cloning capabilities, we’ll primarily compare these tools across these key criteria for generative AI voice generation software:
Best For | Multilingual Voices | Custom Voices or Voice Changing | Dubbing and Translation | API | Starting Price | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Murf | Best for Multichannel Content Creation | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | $23 per month, billed annually, or $29 billed monthly for one editor |
PlayHT | Best for AI Voice Agents | Yes | Limited | Yes | Yes | $0 for non-commercial use |
LOVO | Best Combined Voice and Video Platform | Yes | Yes | Limited | Yes | $24 per user per month, billed annually, or $29 per user billed monthly; free 14-day trial available |
ElevenLabs | Best for Enterprise Scalability | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | $0 for up to 10,000 characters per month |
Speechify | Best for AI Narration | Limited variety and availability | Yes | Yes | Limited | $0 for 10 standard reading voices and limited text-to-speech features |
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Murf is one of the top generative AI voice tools available to both casual and business users, providing them with an accessible user interface and a range of scalable voice generation and editing features. Its primary focus areas include text-to-speech content generation, no-code voice editing, AI-powered translation, AI voice deployment to apps via API, voice cloning, and an AI dubbing feature that is currently in beta for more than 20 languages.
Many business users select this tool for its wide range of collaborative features, its enterprise-level security and compliance expertise and features, its vocal quality and variety, and its comprehensive support for various enterprise use cases.
In addition to its easy-to-use enterprise integrations with various creative and product development tools, Murf also offers free creative guides and resources on the following topics: e-learning, explainer videos, YouTube videos, Spotify ads, corporate videos, advertisements, audiobooks, podcasts, video games, training videos, presentations, product demos, IVR voices, animation character voices, and documentaries.
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Use case-specific support guides. | No free plan beyond a 10-minute free trial. |
Integrations with Canva, Google, and Adobe. | No voiceover recording features currently. |
To see a list of the leading generative AI apps, read our guide: Top 20 Generative AI Tools and Apps 2024
PlayHT has been a favorite artificial intelligence voice generation tool for a few years now, extending to users a highly accessible and scalable tool for multilingual AI voice generation. Compared to other AI voice generation tools, PlayHT first and foremost sets itself apart with its range of voice and language options: All plans, including the free plan, can access 907 voices and 142 different languages and accents. The tool also comes with limited instant voice clones and will soon offer high-fidelity clones to enterprise users.
Beyond its more conventional AI voice features and tools, PlayHT has set its sights on a very specific enterprise use case: AI voice agents. With its new feature set, Play Agents, users can create their own AI voice agent avatars with specific parameters and prompts about how they should greet and respond to user interactions. The tool also comes with several prebuilt agent templates, API-driven agent training and tracking for developers, and a simple table for tracking agent conversation history.
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
More voice and language options than most competitors. | Multilingual features somewhat limited for voice cloning. |
Dedicated, easy-to-use technology for AI voice agents. | Character limits in Free and Creator plans. |
Pricing for PlayHT depends on whether you select PlayHT Studio, AI voice agents, or the API subscription plans:
For more information about generative AI providers, read our in-depth guide: Generative AI Companies: Top 20 Leaders
LOVO offers its users a suite of useful AI features that not only support AI voice generation and voiceover initiatives but also other creative tasks related to video and image creation. LOVO’s flagship platform, Genny, is a user-friendly tool that uses its own generative AI technologies to enable video editing, subtitle generation, voice generation, and voice cloning tasks. With the help of ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion models, users can also generate shortform and longform text and AI art projects at no additional cost and with no third-party tooling requirements.
Users most appreciate that this tool supports multiple languages and unique vocal tones, is easy to use, and offers high-quality voice outputs compared to many competitors. Many users also appreciate that they can purchase affordable, lifetime deals through AppSumo.
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Includes a built-in voice recorder and upload options for voice cloning. | Priority queue may delay projects for Free and Basic plan users. |
All-in-one solution for video, voice, and image creative tasks. | Expensive per-user pricing structure. |
Pricing for LOVO depends on whether you select an All in One or Subtitles subscription plan:
For an in-depth comparison of two leading AI art generators, see our guide: Midjourney vs. Dall-E: Best AI Image Generator 2024
ElevenLabs is an artificial intelligence research firm that has developed comprehensive AI voice technologies for text to speech, speech to speech, dubbing, voice cloning, and multilingual content generation. Users frequently compliment ElevenLabs on the quality of the voice products it produces, noting that the vocal tone and overall quality feel more realistic than what most other competitors are producing.
ElevenLabs is one of the most business-friendly AI voice tools on the market today, offering advanced features at different price points. Its free plan is fairly comprehensive, including access to 29 languages and thousands of voices, automated dubbing, custom voices, and API. Six different pricing tiers are available, with the top tier offering unique enterprise draws like custom terms and SSO, unlimited concurrency, and volume-based discounts.
Additionally, ElevenLabs offers a grant program designed for the unique needs of business startups. Eligible startup applicants who can convince the vendor of their longterm strategy and growth potential will be given three months of free access with 11 million characters per month and enterprise features.
Pros | Cons |
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Users frequently praise the audio quality for this tool. | Unclear if user limits apply to certain subscription levels. |
Generous free plan features; scalable plans as a whole. | Somewhat limited API documentation (though API is available in all plans). |
Speechify is an AI voice solution that specializes in text-to-speech technology for mobile platforms and more casual use cases, like audiobook narration. With the Speechify AI platform, users can select from a wide variety of AI voices, including voices that mimic celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Snoop Dogg. All of this is available in various mobile and online locations, including through browser extensions that are accessible and favorably reviewed by users.
While Speechify’s core audience is recreational users, students, and other more casual users who want a convenient solution for reading off text in various formats, the platform offers some key enterprise AI usability features through its Voice Over Studio for Business. With this suite of Speechify solutions, business users can benefit from unlimited video and voice downloads, commercial rights, collaborative project management features, dozens of voices, and enterprise security and compliance features.
Pros | Cons |
---|---|
Wide range of subscription options and price points. | Waitlist for text-to-speech API. |
Accessible browser extensions and mobile app versions. | Somewhat limited features, especially for enterprises. |
Pricing for Speechify all depends on how you want to use the tool. Here are some of the options you have as a Speechify user:
Custom pricing and discounts may also be available for business teams and educational organizations.
AI voice generator software typically includes features that help users transform text, existing audio, and other media into voices with adjustable qualities to meet their needs. Additionally, many of these generative AI tools come with features to make enterprise-level collaboration and content creation run more smoothly. In general, expect to find the following features in AI voice generators:
Text to speech (TTS) is a type of AI technology that changes written text into spoken audio. Most AI voice generator software allows users to upload text of different lengths and in different languages in order to generate a vocal version of the same content.
With voice cloning, AI technology can capture the content, tonality, speed, and other characteristics of a person’s voice in a recording and use that information to create a faithful replica or clone of that unique voice. With this capability, users can generate entirely new content and recordings that sound like they were spoken by that person.
On some AI voice platforms, if you submit your own voice clip or directly record your voice into the app, you can then change that voice into a completely different character, adjusting the tone, accent, mood, and other features. Many users want this feature for creative projects like video game development.
Most generative AI voice tools give users access to a diverse, multilingual library of predeveloped voice models. Through extensive training, these TTS models are prepared to create voice transcripts and recordings that accurately adhere to each language’s specific pronunciations, tonalities, pauses, and other characteristics of that language’s speech patterns.
Taking TTS a step further, dubbing and translation with AI make the effort to translate an existing text or voice recording into a different spoken language. For dubbing specifically, existing recordings — often movies, commercials, and other visual media — receive a new vocal overlay, typically dubbed in a different language by an AI model.
With the help of APIs and built-in third-party integrations, users can more easily add AI voice creation and editing capabilities directly into their app and product development workflows. A growing number of AI voice tools are adding relevant third-party integrations to creative platforms as well as social and distribution channels.
To learn about today’s top generative AI tools for the video market, see our guide: 5 Best AI Video Generators
To evaluate these AI voice generators and other leaders in this AI market sector, we looked at each tool’s standard and unique features while focusing on the following criteria. Each criterion is weighted based on its importance to the typical business user:
Needless to say, vocal quality, fidelity, and usability are the most important aspects of an AI voice generator. Within this criterion, we evaluated each tool based on the realistic quality of AI voices, the accuracy of AI voice generations, the availability of different voices and languages, and the ability to granularly edit generated voice products. We also considered whether a tool offered users the ability to customize or record their own voices and voiceovers.
Enterprise scalability is hugely important for AI voice generators since many companies invest in this type of platform to create global marketing, sales, and product content at scale.
For enterprise scalability, we assessed each tool’s global library of voices and dialects, its adherence to enterprise security and compliance standards, features that go beyond voice content production, collaboration and sharing capabilities, integrations with relevant third-party tools and platforms, and the scalability of APIs. We placed a special emphasis on each tool’s enterprise-level plans and the additional features that are available at this level.
Pricing is a crucial factor when considering AI voice technology, as the cost of these tools varies widely for the features you get at that price point. As part of this evaluation, we identified whether each tool offered a free plan option, we compared how prices scale from package to package, we considered how many price points were available to users, and we looked at the value of the features added to each tier, particularly enterprise-level tiers.
AI voice tools are supposed to make content creation a simpler task; for this reason, ease of use and accessibility were also important factors in how we judged each of these tools. We looked at each tool’s no-code features, the user-friendliness of voice editing tools, the quality of customer support at each subscription tier, and the availability of self-service resources and community forums for getting started and troubleshooting.
Learn more about AI voice generator technology and the top solutions available through these frequently asked questions:
The best AI voice generator will depend on your particular needs and project plans, but Murf is consistently a top choice for its flexibility, with a wide range of general use cases.
Yes, several AI voice generators are free or are available in free, limited versions.
The best free AI voice generator options will vary based on your exact requirements. ElevenLabs is the best free solution for users who require API access and interoperability with other resources, while Speechify is the most generous for users who don’t require downloads or more complex features.
AI voice technology has grown in popularity for content creators of all backgrounds and budgets. These type of generative AI tools enable creative scalability for videos, podcasts, audiobooks, customer service interactions, and a slew of other enterprise use cases that require consistent and original voice content. What’s more, this technology is frequently customizable and available in affordable plans, meaning users of all stripes can try out these tools to figure out their potential for their projects.
If you’re not sure which of the AI voice tools in this guide is the best fit for your organization, take some time to test out the free plans or trials that are available for each tool. You’ll quickly discover if the software meets your particular needs, if it’s user friendly, and if it has the features necessary to keep up with your organization’s security and compliance requirements.
For a full portrait of the AI vendors serving a wide array of business needs, read our in-depth guide: 150+ Top AI Companies 2024
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