Microsoft Enhances Copilot with Advanced AI-Powered Text-to-Speech Features

Microsoft's Copilot AI text-to-speech gets new, cleaner 'scripted mode'

Copilot Audio Expressions can now read text aloud in a more direct fashion without altering its content. Microsoft's AI Manager Mustafa Suleyman recently unveiled in a social media post a new feature called "Scripted Mode" in Copilot Labs for turning written scripts into text-to-speech. Copilot Labs is an experimental platform where you can try out Microsoft's newest AI features that are still in development. Specifically, the feature is part of Copilot Audio Expressions, which is the actual tool that turns text into spoken audio. Previously, Copilot Audio Expressions only had two modes: Story Mode (which weaves together multiple vocal styles and characters for a storytelling experience) and Emotive Mode (which uses a single, distinct voice that matches a particular mood with some improvisation). With Scripted Mode, Copilot Audio Expressions can now take text and read it aloud with a fast and direct take, making sure to read the content verbatim without any riffing or creative changes. You can still select which voice and style to use for the reading. Copilot Audio Expressions is still only available in English, but Microsoft is exploring ways to support more languages.

Microsoft's Copilot Can Now Turn Your Scripts Into Expressive Voiceovers

Microsoft is adding another new artificial intelligence (AI) feature to Copilot, giving it the ability to natively generate audio. On Wednesday, the Redmond-based tech giant announced that Copilot is getting a new audio generation feature where users will be able to hand it a script and it will convert it into an AI voiceover in different styles. Since it is native voice generation, none of the modes will sound like typical text-to-speech models. Notably, the company is powering this capability via the homegrown MAI-Voice-1 AI model. Microsoft's Copilot Can Now Read Aloud Your Scripts In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, announced the release of Copilot's new audio generation modes. He highlighted that these are powered by the MAI-Voice-1 AI model, which was released at the end of August. Currently, this experience is only available via Copilot Labs when signing in using a personal account. There are three modes to try out. First is the Scripted mode, where the AI chatbot reads out the input verbatim, without adding any unnecessary flair or style. These are best used for tasks such as formal announcements, document narration, and information presentation. The second mode is dubbed Emotive. Suleyman says it is more focused on making the input sound dramatic and flashy. The voice here will include a wide range of intonation, pitch, and tone to deliver a performative piece. This is ideal for advertising, marketing, or informal narration. Copilot's final audio generation mode is Story. This is the most versatile format, which includes multiple voices and characters. The company says this mode is ideal for storytelling, podcast-like presentations, and analysis-related tasks. The feature is currently free to use, although Microsoft has not mentioned any rate limits. It is unclear when the feature will be released into the Copilot mobile and desktop apps. Notably, at the time of release, Microsoft said the MAI-Voice-1 is a speech generation model that natively generates expressive and natural-sounding voice. It can generate a full minute of audio in under a second on a single GPU. The tech giant trained the model on around 15,000 Nvidia GPUs.