Forum Discussion
AI TTS and SSML functionality
Another vote for this.
Hi BrendtWaters! Thanks for letting us know that this feature would be beneficial for you, too. I know others have shared interest in more control when it comes to pronunciation with AI voices. To ensure I'm sharing the correct information with our Product team, would you mind sharing where you've been stuck with the lack of control with AI voices? Is it certain words, languages, or something else?
By far, the biggest loss is the phoneme tag. Even the smartest of AI voices stumbles on pronunciations. While sometimes, you can "fake" it out to say what you want (e.g., with creative spelling), when emphasis is put on the wrong syllable, there's no way to fix that other than the phoneme tag.
Case in point: The word "conduct" can be a verb ("Bob will conduct the orchestra") or a noun ("Mary has good conduct"). Same word, two different pronunciations.While we were overhauling all our courses (before moving to on-board AI TTS), we were using an external tool (creating mp3s) that allowed the phoneme tag. So that we didn't have to keep figuring out the same IPA over and over, we made a library of phoneme tags. It exceeded 50 tags. So this is no minor loss.
I'm truly confused why, what is supposed to be an upgrade, *loses* an ability that on-board (regular) TTS had.
Hello BrendtWaters,
Thanks for breaking this down. We hear that when AI voices mispronounce words with multiple pronunciations, like “conduct”, there’s no reliable way to correct it without phoneme controls. You’d like support for phoneme so you can ensure accurate pronunciation without relying on workarounds or external tools. We’ve shared this with our product team so they know how important this is to your workflow. We'll be sure to share any future updates in this thread, so all are in the loop!
Yes, that is an accurate summary of my point.
