Customizable speech transcription, translation, and synthesis now available in the unified Speech service
Integrate speech into your apps, workflows, and websites using the unified Speech service, announced this week at Microsoft Build. Speech combines the capabilities of the existing Translator Speech API, Bing Speech API, and Custom Speech Service (preview) into a unified and fully customizable service.
You can now use the speech to text, speech translation, and text to speech services with the same subscription. All three services can be customized using the preview of the new custom speech, translator and voice features, also announced this week at //build:
- Speech to Text (Speech Transcription) – converting spoken audio to text with default or custom models tailored to specific vocabulary or speaking styles of users (language model customization), or to better match the expected environment, such as with background noise (acoustic model customization). Speech to text technology enables a wide range of use cases like voice commands, real-time transcriptions, and call center log analysis.
- Text to Speech (Speech Synthesis) – Bringing voice to any app by converting text to audio in near real time with the choice of over 75 default voices, or with the new custom voice models, creating a unique and recognizable brand voice tuned to your own recordings.
- Speech Translation – providing real-time speech translation capabilities with models based on neural machine translation (NMT) technologies. Three elements of the Speech Translation pipeline can now be customized: speech recognition, text to speech and machine translation.
Neural translations with the newest version of the Translator text API (version 3), can also use custom systems built using the new Translator Custom feature.
The unified Speech service is currently offered as a preview. For speech translation requiring a service in General Availability, developers should continue to use the Microsoft Translator Speech API. Please follow the Microsoft Translator blog and Twitter page for continuing, up to date Microsoft Translator service announcements.
Learn more on the Cognitive Services blog.
