Text-to-Speech (TTS)

What is Text-to-Speech (TTS)?

Text-to-Speech (TTS) is the technology that converts written text into spoken audio in real time.

Text-to-Speech (TTS) is the technology that converts written text into spoken audio. In an AI voice assistant, TTS is the final voice stage: after the system understands the caller and decides what to say, TTS turns that response into natural-sounding speech in real time. Quality matters because robotic or mistimed audio makes callers disengage; modern TTS aims for natural intonation and low latency so the reply lands without an awkward pause. Example: when an AI voice assistant tells a customer “your order shipped this morning and arrives Thursday,” TTS generates that sentence as audio from text the model produced a fraction of a second earlier. On the input side, TTS pairs with speech recognition (STT/ASR) to complete a two-way spoken conversation.

BSG covers this in more depth in Voice Bot vs. Chatbot: Selecting the Ideal Conversational AI for Your Business.

Related terms

• Automatic Speech Recognition (STT/ASR)
• Large Language Model (LLM)
• Natural Language Processing

Related BSG products

• Conversational AI Voice