February 3rd, 2021 AT&T/Warner Bros. Microsoft is opening up limited access to a text-to-speech AI called Custom Neural Voice, which allows developers to create custom synthetic voices. The tech is part of an Azure AI service called Speech. Companies can use the tech for things like voice-powered smart assistants and devices, chatbots, online learning and reading audiobooks or news. They’ll have to apply for access and gain approval from Microsoft before they can harness Custom Neural Voice. The tech can deliver more natural-sounding voices than many other text-to-speech services, according to Microsoft. Custom voices use a bank of sounds, or phonemes, to create voice fonts. Custom Neural Voice uses multiple neural networks in an attempt to make sure the prosody (the tone and duration of each phoneme) and pronunciation is accurate. That helps the AI to mimic an actor's voice correctly or use a realistic-sounding synthetic voice.