Expanding the Multi-Award Winning Veritone Voice Solution with New Capabilities – Enabling the Development of the Iconic Walter Cronkite’s Synthetic Voice.
Veritone, Inc., creator of aiWARE, a hyper-expansive enterprise AI platform, announced the acquisition of VocaliD, Inc., a US-based company that pioneered the creation of personalized synthetic voices. VocaliD will enhance Veritone’s existing synthetic voice offerings for commercial enterprise including brands, podcasters, broadcasters, studios, publishers and corporations.
With the addition of VocaliD, Veritone Voice has the ability to control and manage the entire voice creation lifecycle for efficiency and scale. Built on Veritone’s aiWARE, Veritone Voice has the unique ability to work with third-party AI models seamlessly–enabling the integration of the VocaliD model to be leveraged instantly. VocaliD’s robust voice models and proprietary vocal adjustment and audio mixing features integrated with Veritone Voice expand the enterprise grade solution while reducing complexity, cost and management time.
Veritone and VocaliD teamed up with the Cronkite estate and New York Times Bestselling Author Joe Garner, to create the synthetic voice model of iconic American Broadcast Journalist Walter Cronkite for use in educational projects.
“Before knowing about Veritone Voice, I could never have imagined that it would be possible for the people to hear Walter Cronkite’s voice reading his own written words at this pivotal point in our history,” said Joe Garner, Garner Creative Concepts chief executive officer. “Hearing Walter’s voice speak the foreword that he wrote for my book in 1998, We Interrupt This Broadcast, has been incredibly meaningful for me personally and professionally.”
Today, Veritone Voice’s growing list of enterprise clients include Audacy, iHeartMedia, Larry King Interactive, Mediacorp and Premiere Networks. In addition to the late and iconic Walter Cronkite, individual talent for advertisements, endorsements and other voiceover projects are also amongst the Veritone Voice roster such as active and retired sports announcers Randy Hahn and Vin Scully, podcaster Bryan Barletta of Sounds Profitable, radio personality and host Ellen K of Kost 103.5, and YouTube influencers and comedians Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal of Mythical Entertainment.
“Veritone Voice brings enormous value to our enterprise clients and IP owners of all sizes. With such a large addressable market, Veritone is able to meet consumer demands for content, at scale, with localization and without sacrificing quality,” said Ryan Steelberg, Veritone president and co-founder. “I am excited to bring in VocaliD from both a people and a technological perspective to expand our Voice offering and provide even more capabilities to existing and future clients.”
VocaliD’s proprietary voice matching and blending technology has been awarded prestigious commericalizations awards from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health and has deep scientific roots in Founder and CEO Dr Rupal Patel’s research at Northeastern University.
“From the beginning, we have believed that our voices are not identical, they are our identities and thus we focused on personalization and customization,” said Dr. Patel. “We are thrilled to join forces with Veritone, to bring our vision of leveraging AI voice to create more equitable, just, diverse, inclusive, expressive and engaging user experiences, to life. Given our shared commitment to responsible and ethical AI, we are poised to shape industry practices and define new monetization models that benefit all stakeholders.”
Winner of Product of the Year in 2021 from NAB, and several other industry awards, Veritone Voice is part of the Veriverse portfolio from Veritone. Rather than focus on one aspect of synthetic voice creation, Veritone Voice offers a comprehensive suite of integrated voice features including creation, management, workflows, monetization and licensing. To protect a creator’s synthetic voice, Veritone includes such features as inaudible watermarks, traceability, licensing protocols and proprietary tools to protect and place claims against unauthorized monetization of content on social platforms. The Veritone Voice solution supports both speech-to-speech and text-to-speech capabilities.
Dr Patel and the VocaliD team will join Veritone’s Commercial Enterprise division, adding expertise and capabilities to engineering, customer success and marketing. The Veritone team is thrilled to embrace this talented group and accelerate their technology and mission together.
