Voice technology is the next big leap in artificial intelligence, and Google is moving fast to stay ahead. The company has announced that Chirp 3, its latest speech-to-text and HD text-to-speech model, will be added to its Vertex AI development platform starting next week.
The update follows Google’s quiet reveal last week that Chirp 3 would introduce eight new voices across 31 languages. This latest addition to Vertex AI will allow developers to build voice assistants, create audiobooks, develop customer support agents, and generate voice-overs for videos. Google shared the news at an event held at its DeepMind offices in London.
Competition in AI voice technology heats up
Google’s move comes when other companies make significant strides in AI voice technology. Last week, Sesame, the startup behind the hyper-realistic AI voices “Maya” and “Miles,” announced the launch of its model, allowing developers to create custom apps and services using its technology.
The rapid advancement in AI-generated voices has raised concerns about potential misuse. In response, Google has set usage restrictions for Chirp 3. At the announcement, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian stated, “We’re just working through some of these things with our safety team.”
AI voice technology is attracting massive investments. Startups like ElevenLabs have secured hundreds of millions of dollars to expand their work in this field. As Google integrates Chirp 3 into its AI ecosystem, it joins other cutting-edge tools such as the Gemini language model, the Imagen image-generation model, and the Veo 2 video generation tool.
The future of AI voice models
It remains to be seen whether Chirp 3 will achieve the same level of human-like realism as some of its competitors. Sesame’s AI voices, in particular, have stood out for their natural sound and emotional depth. However, Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, cautioned that AI’s development is a long-term process.
“In the near term … this idea that [AI is] a silver bullet to everything in the next couple of years, I don’t see that happening just yet,” Hassabis said. “We’re still quite a few years away from something like AGI. It’s going to change things over the next decade.”
Google introduced Vertex AI in 2021 as a cloud-based platform for building machine learning models. At the time, AI had not yet reached the mainstream popularity it enjoys today. Since then, Google has been investing heavily in AI development to keep up with competitors like Microsoft and Amazon, which offer their own AI tools for developers.
Vertex AI allows users to classify data, train models, and prepare them for production. While Google currently focuses on its in-house AI models, it may eventually open the platform to external models.
Google has been developing its “Chirp” voice technology for years. The name was initially used as a codename for early projects aimed at competing with Amazon’s Alexa. Now, with Chirp 3 integrated into Vertex AI, Google is signaling that voice AI is becoming a key focus for the future.
