7 Most Popular AI Voice Generators for Making Music in 2023
AI voice generators are outshining every other AI music app category, in popularity as well as overall performance. Early text-to-speech apps like Uberduck could only speak in a celebrity voice. Musicians had to shape the melody in a tool like Melodyne to get those voices to sing. All of that is changing as new advances to vocal timbre transfer have started rolling out to the masses.
Major labels and some of their artists are making public statements against the unauthorized use of their protected voices. In October 2022, the RIAA stated that they considered AI voice impersonation to be a credible threat. They may have legal precedent to sue smaller artists who monetize a viral hit using once of these celebrity AI voices.
In April 2023, when the AI Drake song Heart on my Sleeve went viral, labels successfully took it down across all streaming platforms. By the time that happened, the song had a reported 600,000 Spotify streams, 15 million TikTok views, and 275,000 Youtube views.
Instead of demanding a profit share, the label ordered the removal of the song. It's unclear whether they will take this all the way to court and try to capture the stream revenue as a penalty. The industry needs a scapegoat to make an example of and this track received enough publicity to warrant that action, if they decide to take it.
A small group of independent artists are taking a different stance. They are actually encouraging the use of their AI voice for music, coming up with music NFT structures to better manage that relationship without legacy industry structures.
Holly Herndon, an established singer with notable impact in the AI music space, trained artificial intelligence on her own voice and is offering it as a service, under the name Holly+. She also has her own AI music podcast where she discusses these topics.
Another major vocal artist, Grimes, took to Twitter this week to announce her support for people using her AI voice. She wants 50% royalties on any hit song using her voice, and explains that this is the same share she would ask from any other collaborator. This permissive attitude throws a wrench in the narrative that all artists are against the use of AI generated voices.
There are some real dangers to voice transfer technology, but they go beyond use in music. Scammers have started using voice clones to target elderly people and exploit them for money. A recent comedy series for music producers portrays US Presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama arguing over a studio mix. Courts of law also need to brace for the potential for fake voices to be used as false evidence.
AI safety will continue to be a major topic over the coming years. But that doesn't have to stop us from experimenting privately with AI voice generators. In fact, there are several ways to use them for your benefit as a music producer. We'll explore all of that in this article.
Best AI voice generators for music producers
There are a lot of AI voice generators out there, but most are not designed for musicians. This article only focuses on the vocal apps that you can use to start creating vocal melodies with artificial intelligence.
If you enjoy text-to-speech apps and plan on designing melodies for your AI voice generator, be sure to check out AudioCipher's text-to-midi VST. You'll be able to type in words and phrases, convert them into melodies, shape them to sound the way you want and apply them to your AI voices using the apps below.
Vocaloid
Murf.ai
Vocaloid - Yamaha's AI Voice Generator for musicians
Vocaloid is the most musical app amongst all the AI voice generators. Yamaha built it specifically for music producers, which means that is has most of the important features that other text-to-speech doesn't. With over 100 voices to choose from, you'll be able to easily test out different vocal types on your track.
Vocaloid 6 includes a voice changer, so you can sing a melody and turn it into another voice. This is common enough in today's landscape, but their secret power is a note-control feature, comparable to what Melodyne offers.
Murf.ai - AI Voice Changer and Voice Cloning
Murf.ai is tackling AI voice technology head on, expanding from text-to-speech to more advanced tools that can change your voice or clone someone else's. With a free account, you'll be able to make limited use of the app, including the voice transfer that you need for AI singing. They also offer a high-touch service that can create a custom voice model for you.
If you're exploring audio for video or want to create an AI music video, check out their audio and music page. You can sing a melody yourself and hear it played back through their voice changer. From there, audition several types of voices until you find the right one.
With a working melody, you can send the track to a similar artist so they can imagine their own voice over it. AI voice changers speed up the process, so you don't have to shape the speech into a melody by hand.
Synthesizer V by Dreamtonics -
Synthesizer V is another AI voice generator geared specifically to musicians. The company is based in Tokyo, where artificial intelligence and music have already been popular for half a decade or more. We recently reviewed NeuTone, a free VST from Japan that acts as a hub for other open source voice changer APIs like Google DDSP and RAVE.
Unlike the NeuTone VST, Synthesizer V is a full DAW that curates a selection of their own AI voice models. They've also created a more robust interface for editing and improving initial output. Like Melodyne and Vocaloid, you're able to sculpt the melody that your AI voice sings. Drag the notes up and down in the audio equivalent to a MIDI editor and Synth V creates a smooth render without losing the emotional tone of the voice.
As you may already know, the majority of voice changers require an internet connection. That's because the neural networks responsible for generating the AI voices are operating as a cloud service. Synthesizer V does not require an internet connection to run its model, meaning you can use it any time or location.
Revocalize - Record and convert your voice
Revocalize has skipped over the text-to-speech tools and dove straight into voice changing. That laser focus has given them the bandwidth to become one of the best apps for generating AI vocal tracks. Subtle qualities of your voice, like your accent or the emotion you're feeling when you speak, will transfer to the new voice. Check out their landing page to hear a demo of the voice changer.
Revocalize aims to protect your voice, as outlined on their about page, but it's not clear exactly how they plan to do that. They could follow in Holly Herndon's steps and use a DAOs to manage and sell access. Water and Music has been sharing lots of content about how to sell AI related music materials, including your voice, on Web3 as well.
Emvoice - Choose from a collection of AI singers
Emvoice One has taken a novel approach to AI singing software, combining a MIDI piano roll interface with text boxes for lyrical snippets. Users program a melody manually and for each melodic segment, Emvoice will spawn a dedicated text area. Type in your short phrase and the vocal model will do its best to match the melodic shape to the pattern of your words.
Fans of their software have noted that the point-and-click approach to melodies can be a bit time consuming. If you want to give it a spin before committing to the $69 dollar vocal models (a price tag that's on par with competitors), they do offer a free trial that's limited to melodies with just seven notes.
Uberduck - The O.G. Text to Speech Generator
We've already covered Uberduck in detail here, but thought it would be interesting to point out their new AI Grimes Challenge. At the start of this article, I mentioned that Grimes recently took to Twitter and announced that creators have permission to use her AI Voice, as long as she gets 50% of royalties.
So if vocal synthesis is exciting to you and you want to experiment with using a celebrity voice to write a hit song, Grimes is a safe bet. You'll likely be able to post the music online without a DMCA takedown.
Google Colab - The AI music underground
There are only half a dozen AI voice apps designed for singing, but you can find many more options from independent developers and hackers on the internet. One good way to find them is to look for a popular text-to-speech tool, like ElevenLabs, and then run a google search like "ElevenLabs singing". You'll find a number of Reddit, Twitter, and Quora conversations on the topic.
To give a concrete example, one Reddit thread pointed us to the Singing Voice Conversion model on Google Colab. These tools require little more than the ability to upload a file, press Colab's play button one step at a time, and the patience while your songs render.
If you'd like to connect with other AI musicians, check out this article we recently shared on the 10 best Machine Learning Music Communities on Discord.