In a potentially ominous merging of tech companies, Spotify is acquiring Sonantic, the AI voice company used for Val Kilmer's voice for the new Top Gun movie.
The deal doesn't seem to have been made official just yet, but Spotify announced its "intention" to buy the company in a blog post shared yesterday (June 13).
The blog noted that Sonantic "creates compelling, nuanced, and stunningly realistic voices from text " and that this "will allow us to create high-quality experiences for our users."
Spotify wrote, "We've identified several potential opportunities for text-to-speech capabilities across our platform, and we believe that over the long term, high-quality voice will be important to growing our share of listening." This could include giving users recommendations when they aren't looking at the screen.
Given that Sonantic's use in Top Gun: Maverick involved realistically simulating the voice of someone who lost their ability to speak due to throat cancer, it's slightly alarming to imagine what other uses Spotify could have in store for the technology.
The deal doesn't seem to have been made official just yet, but Spotify announced its "intention" to buy the company in a blog post shared yesterday (June 13).
The blog noted that Sonantic "creates compelling, nuanced, and stunningly realistic voices from text " and that this "will allow us to create high-quality experiences for our users."
Spotify wrote, "We've identified several potential opportunities for text-to-speech capabilities across our platform, and we believe that over the long term, high-quality voice will be important to growing our share of listening." This could include giving users recommendations when they aren't looking at the screen.
Given that Sonantic's use in Top Gun: Maverick involved realistically simulating the voice of someone who lost their ability to speak due to throat cancer, it's slightly alarming to imagine what other uses Spotify could have in store for the technology.
