tts

Text-to-speech (TTS) technology converts written text into natural-sounding spoken audio. **Neural TTS revolution**: Deep learning replaced robotic concatenative synthesis with natural prosody, emotion, and expressiveness. Models learn speech patterns from massive voice datasets. **Leading technologies**: Tacotron 2 + WaveGlow (attention-based), FastSpeech 2 (parallel generation), VITS (end-to-end), Vall-E (voice cloning from 3s sample), Tortoise TTS (high quality, slow). **Commercial services**: ElevenLabs (leading voice cloning, multilingual), Play.ht, Amazon Polly, Google Cloud TTS, Azure Cognitive Services. **Open source**: Bark (Suno AI, highly expressive with laughter/emotion), StyleTTS 2 (style transfer), Coqui TTS. **Voice cloning ethics**: Creates deepfake concerns, consent required for cloning real voices, platforms adding watermarking and detection. **Use cases**: Audiobook narration, accessibility, video voiceovers, virtual assistants, gaming NPCs. **Quality factors**: Training data quality, prosody handling, emotion control, multilingual support.