Conversational AI and Voice Cloning Market to Reach $12.9 Billion by 2026

Research firm Mind Commerce has predicted in a new report that the conversational artificial intelligence and voice cloning platforms market, including machine learning, natural language processing, automated speech recognition, and deep learning technologies, will reach $12.9 billion by 2026.

This comes as call centers are evolving to become AI-enabled customer contact service providers for enterprise services and enterprise services companies increasingly leveraging AI for CRM as well as inbound and outbound marketing and sales operations.

Traditional peer-to-peer communication systems, consisting of emails, phone calls, text messages, and face-to-face meetings, have hugely been disrupted with the widespread adoption of next-generation platforms, such as social media, messaging apps, and voice-based assistants, which has triggered a major paradigm shift in customer behavior, the research firm said. Not surprisingly, younger people are at the tip of the adoption curve not only for text but also for voice, video, and image sharing, it added.

The firm also observed a shift incustomers' business engagement expectations when they realize they can engage over their favorite chat platforms using text, voice, and video communications. Conversational AI plays a profound role here, automatically communicating with customers with an authentically human-sounding, AI-powered bot, it said.

Businesses are beginning to integrate conversational AI through voice assistants, chatbots, and messaging apps, with Mind Commerce expecting 33 percent of enterprises to shift their customer support functions entirely to virtual assistants by 2026.

The growth in conversational AI is also being supplemented with voice cloning, according to the research. Whereas conversational AI merely sounds like a human, voice cloning mimics a known person's voice that is distinguishable as someone that a person would believe is the real person they know. Like basic conversational AI, it can be used with various applications and industry verticals, particularly retail and other consumer services-oriented business areas.

With voice cloning, businesses can introduce a voice that sounds familiar to the customer to build a long-term relationship and ensure a better customer experience. Voice cloning models are trained through some data sets, typically within only a few hours of recorded speech. It also leverages AI and machine learning to train models .

In addition to shifting customer behaviors and expectations, other factors driving enterprises and contact service providers toward conversational AI and voice cloning solutions include saving time for customer service, improving real-time accessibility, increasing efficiency, reducing customer acquisition costs, building long-term relationships, handling customer queries effectively, and reducing customer complaints.

Pandemic mitigation is also expected to continue adding significant growth to the conversational AI and voice cloning market as businesses seek to automate operations and enhance worker safety, the research firm predicted.