Hugging Face launches Phonon, a speech model that runs on-device
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Hugging Face has launched Phonon, a text-to-speech model that runs on phones, laptops, single-board computers and browsers without sending text to a server. The company says the models are about 65 MB and 75 MB, speak English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese, and include more than 100 voices. They also support voice cloning and custom voice creation through Gradium Studio.
Phonon 31m covers English under the Apache 2.0 license, including commercial products, while Phonon 40m covers all five languages under a non-commercial license. Hugging Face says the model had more than 200,000 downloads in its first two weeks. The launch includes Transformers integration and offline demonstrations on watches, phones, games, browsers and other projects.
Why it matters · editorial interpretation
The launch offers an alternative for adding speech synthesis to devices and browsers without sending text to a server, which may matter for offline experiences. The different licenses also make model selection important: Phonon 31m permits commercial products, while 40m is non-commercial, according to Hugging Face.