Sonantic
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Sonantic is ready to convince listeners that synthetic voices can cry
When you think of voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, the words “emotional” and “expressive” probably don’t come to mind. Instead, there’s that recognizably flat and polite voice, devoid of all affect — which is fine for an assistant, but isn’t going to work if you want to use synthetic voices in games, movies and other storytelling media.
That’s why a startup called Sonantic is trying to create AI that can convincingly cry and convey “deep human emotion.” The U.K.-based startup announced last month that it has raised €2.3 million in funding led by EQT Ventures, and today it’s releasing a video that shows off what its technology is capable of.
You can judge the results for yourself in the video below; Sonantic says all the voices were created by its technology. Personally, I’m not sure I’d say the performances were interchangeable with a talented human voice actor — but they’re certainly more impressive than anything synthetic that I’ve heard before.
Sonantic’s actual product is an audio editor that it’s already testing with game makers. The editor includes a variety of different voice models, and co-founder and CEO Zeena Qureshi said those models are based on and developed with actual voice actors, who then get to share in the profits.
“We delve into the details of voice, the nuances of breath,” Qureshi said. “That voice itself needs to tell a story.”
Co-founder and CTO John Flynn added that game studios are an obvious starting point, as they often need to record tens of thousands of lines of dialogue. This could allow them to iterate more quickly, he said, to alter voices for different in-game circumstances (like when a character is running and should sound like they’re out of breath) and to avoid voice strain when characters are supposed to do things like cry or shout.
At the same time, Flynn comes from the world of movie post-production, and he suggested that the technology applies to many industries beyond gaming. The goal isn’t to replace actors, but instead to explore new kinds of storytelling opportunities.
“Look how much CGI technology has supported live-action films,” he said. “It’s not an either-or. A new technology allows you to tell new stories in a fantastic way.”
Sonantic also put me in touch with Arabella Day, one of the actors who helped develop the initial voice models. Day remembered spending hours recording different lines, then finally getting a phone call from Flynn, who proceeded to play her a synthesized version of her own voice.
“I said to him, ‘Is that me? Did I record that?’ ” she recalled.
She described the work with Sonantic as “a real partnership,” one in which she provides new recordings and feedback to continually improve the model (apparently her latest work involves American accents). She said the company wanted her to be comfortable with how her voice might be used, even asking her if there were any companies she wanted to blacklist.
“As an actor, I’m not at all thinking that the future of acting is AI,” Day said. “I’m hoping this is one component of what I’m doing, an extra possible edge that I have.”
At the same time, she said that there are “legitimate” concerns in many fields about AI replacing human workers.
“If it’s going to be the future of entertainment, I want to be a part of it,” she said. “But I want to be a part of it and work with it.”
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Sonantic scores €2.3M funding to bring ‘human-quality’ artificial voices to games
Sonantic, a U.K. startup that has developed “human-quality” artificial voice technology for the games and entertainment industry, has raised €2.3 million in funding.
Leading the round is EQT Ventures, with participation from existing backers, including Entrepreneur First (EF), AME Cloud Ventures and Bart Swanson of Horizons Ventures. I also understand one of the company’s earlier investors is Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin.
Founded in 2018 by CEO Zeena Qureshi and CTO John Flynn as they went through EF’s company builder programme in London, Sonantic (previously Speak Ai) says it wants to disrupt the global gaming and entertainment voice industry. The startup has developed artificial voice tech that it claims is able to offer “expressive, realistic voice acting” on-demand for use by game studios. It already has R&D partnerships underway with more than 10 AAA game studios.
“Getting dialogue into game development is a slow, expensive and labour-intensive task,” says Qureshi, when asked to define the problem Sonantic wants to solve. “Dialogue pipelines consist of casting, booking studios, contracts, scheduling, editing, directing and a whole lot of coordination. Voiced narrative video games can take up to 10 years to make with game design changing frequently, defaulting game devs to carry out several iteration cycles — often leading to going over budgets and game releases being delayed.”
To help remedy this, Sonantic offers what Qureshi dubs “dynamic voice acting on-demand,” with the ability to craft the exact type of character in terms of gender, personality, accent, tone and emotional state. The startup’s human quality text-to-speech system is offered via an API and a graphical user interface tool that lets its synthetic voice actors be edited, sculpted and directed “just like a human actor,” she tells me.
This sees Sonantic work directly with actors to synthesise their voices whilst also harnessing their unique skills in performance. “We then augment how actors work by offering them a digital version of themselves that can create passive income for them,” explains the Sonantic CEO.
For the games studios, Sonantic offers faster iteration cycles at a cheaper price because it cuts down logistical costs and has voice models ready to perform. Its SaaS model and API also makes it easier to create audio performances to test out potential narratives or to finesse a story, helping with editing and directing.
Meanwhile, Sonantic says it is gearing up to publicly reveal how its technology can capture “deep emotions across the full spectrum,” from subtle all the way through to exaggerated, which it says is usually something only very skilled actors can achieve.
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