XPeng Upgrades EV Voice Assistant with Microsoft TTS

Chinese carmaker XPeng has upgraded its automotive voice assistant with Microsoft's custom neural voice capability based on Neural Text-to-Speech (TTS), a feature of Azure AI.

XPeng uses Microsoft Azure with caching and compression to deliver a voice sampling rate of 24K Hz and quantization level of 16 bits without overburdening the data network or the car's processors. XPENG also worked with Microsoft to minimize ambiguity and optimize speech recognition accuracy.

"This is a cutting-edge exploration of vehicle voice interaction in the auto industry," said Hao Chao, senior expert with XPeng Automotive AI Products, in a statement. "It required months of dedicated work by our team to overcome the challenges and now delivers a whole new level of natural speech. With a deep understanding of urban mobility, we are finding many more scenarios to leverage AI technology for a high level of driver-machine intuition."

"With advancements in research and technology, Azure Cognitive Services like vision and speech will play a pivotal role in defining unique in-vehicle experiences," said Sanjay Ravi, general manager, of the automotive, mobility, and transportation industry at Microsoft, in a statement. "With speech as a primary interaction tool within the vehicle, Microsoft's custom neural voice services enable automakers to develop their own differentiated and authentic branded experiences."