Text-to-speech (TTS) technology is an innovative solution that converts written text into spoken words. It has become a game-changer in several industries and has revolutionized how people interact with machines, making communication faster, more efficient, and accessible to everyone.
Businesses and consumers recognize the benefits of text-to-speech in various industries such as automotive, healthcare, entertainment, and more.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the most significant benefits of text-to-speech in diverse industries and how it transforms communication. But first, let’s start with how this technology works.
What Is Text-to-Speech and Why It Matters Now
Text-to-Speech (TTS) converts written content into natural-sounding audio. In 2025, TTS is no longer a novelty—it’s a core capability for accessibility, customer experience, and global product growth. Neural models have made voices more lifelike, more controllable, and easier to localize than earlier concatenative or parametric systems. For many teams, TTS unlocks new channels (voice assistants, IVR, audio articles) and removes barriers for users who prefer or require audio.
[Also Read: What is a Voice Assistant? & How do Siri and Alexa Understand What You’re Saying?]
A feature in many TTS tools is word highlighting. As words are spoken, they are highlighted on the screen. This helps children associate the spoken word with its written form.
Some TTS utilities come with OCR technology. This lets the tool read text from images. For instance, a child could snap a picture of a road sign and have the text converted to spoken words.
Speech data plays a crucial role in making text-to-speech work. It is a collection of pre-recorded human speech used to generate the speech output. The system selects the appropriate speech data based on the context of the text and uses it to generate a natural-sounding speech output.
Text-to-speech has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, thanks to machine learning and AI advancements. Modern text-to-speech systems can generate speech output virtually indistinguishable from human speech. This makes it possible for people to interact with devices more naturally and intuitively.
2024–2025 Advances to Know
Prosody & style control
A major shift is finer control over prosody (rhythm, intonation, emphasis). Recent work explores zero-shot and style-transfer methods that let you steer emotion, energy, and speaking style for expressiveness and brand voice—without retraining from scratch. This is key for lifelike IVR, training content, and entertainment.
Multilingual & low-resource languages
Global teams need voices that cover not just “big 10” languages but regional and low-resource ones. Research shows multilingual pre-training can improve intelligibility and naturalness in low-resource TTS by pooling data across languages, then adapting to the target language. This improves coverage in places like South and Southeast Asia and Africa. In India, initiatives are actively pushing TTS for tribal and low-resource languages (e.g., Santali, Mundari, Bhili), highlighting the importance of community-sourced data and localized evaluation.
Latency & edge deployment
For voice assistants, IVR, in-car systems, and kiosk UX, latency is a hard requirement. Benchmarks and docs from engine providers show how to measure end-to-end TTS latency and compare engines; edge-optimized runtimes can deliver faster response times than cloud in certain setups. Teams should profile request-to-first-audio and request-to-completion under realistic conditions.
Accessibility & compliance
TTS supports accessibility when paired with correct content semantics, transcripts, and media practices. WCAG 2.2 sets testable criteria for accessible web content, and U.S. Section 508 guidance covers synchronized media (captions, audio descriptions). If your TTS powers public-facing services, align with these standards from the start.
[Also Read: What is Voice Recognition: Why You Need it, Use Cases, Examples & Advantages]
Data Is the Differentiator
Coverage matters
The same model can sound great in one locale and struggle in another if training data is thin. Aim for diversity across speakers (age, gender, accent), environments (quiet/noisy), speaking styles (neutral, conversational), and SNR ranges. Low-resource locales benefit from multilingual pre-training plus targeted data gathering and careful annotation.
Annotation quality
Transcription accuracy, time alignment, phonetic labels, and prosodic markers (if available) feed directly into model quality and prosody control. Build a review loop that flags misreads, mis-timings, and inconsistent tags.
Privacy, consent, and licensing
Use consented data, track rights for commercial use, and document provenance. This reduces legal risk and enables model sharing inside your organization.
Limitations of Text to speech
Text-to-speech has undeniably transformed various industries, making operations more efficient and accessible. However, it’s important to acknowledge its limitations. Here’s an overview:
- It can struggle with capturing the emotional and contextual subtleties of human speech, which can be critical in business settings.
- While TTS may sound natural, it lacks the personal touch that comes with human interaction, particularly in customer-focused sectors like marketing and sales.
- Not all content types are well-suited for TTS. Creative or emotionally rich materials may require the nuance of human narration for a more authentic experience.
Where Shaip fits
- Speech data collection for target locales and speaking styles.
- Annotation & lexicon creation for domain terms and names.
- Multilingual/low-resource datasets to extend coverage.
- Data licensing & compliance to keep usage clean and auditable.
Conclusion
Text-to-speech offers numerous advantages but isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Businesses should weigh these limitations against the benefits. Knowing when and how to use TTS can help companies optimize this technology and enrich customer experience while maintaining quality.
Adopting TTS doesn’t mean sidelining the human element but complementing it to offer an improved and more versatile service.
