Microsoft text-to-speech tool now supports Hindi, Indian English

The two are among the 15 new dialects added to the service, enabled with state-of-the-art AI audio quality.

Microsoft's Neural TTS can be used to make interactions with chatbots and virtual assistants more natural and engaging.

It is also being used to convert digital texts such as e-books into audiobooks and being deployed for in-car navigation systems, the company said in a statement.

"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," said Sundar Srinivasan, General Manager, Microsoft India (R&D) Pvt Ltd.

Organisations in sectors like telecom, media and entertainment, retail, manufacturing, and product/ service development are using Neural TTS.

Udaan, India's largest online business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, is using text-to-speech in Azure to develop conversational interfaces for their voice assistants, Microsoft said.

Neural TTS is a part of Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services and converts text to lifelike speech for a more natural interface.

The service also provides customisable voices, fine-tuned auto control, and flexible deployment from cloud to edge.

With natural-sounding speech that matches the stress patterns and intonation of human voices, Neural TTS significantly reduces listening fatigue when users are interacting with AI systems.

The service enables human-like natural and clear articulation and uses deep neural networks to overcome the limits of traditional text-to-speech systems in matching the patterns of stress and pitch in spoken language.

Overall, Microsoft TTS supports 110 voices and over 45 languages and variants.