The U.K based startup Sonantic has taken an initiative to develop “human-quality” artificial voice technology for the games and entertainment industry. At present, the company has raised €2.3 million in the funding process. EQT Ventures is leading the fundraising round and with contribution from existing backers, including AME Cloud Ventures, Bart Swanson of Horizons Ventures and Entrepreneur First (EF). In addition to this, one of the company’s previous investors is Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin.
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Sonantic company was founded in 2018 by CEO Zeena Qureshi and CTO John Flynn. The idea of the startup came into their minds when they went through EF’s company builder programme in London. The U.K based wants to interrupt the global entertainment and gaming voice industry. The startup is planning to develop artificial voice technology that will add a human-like an essence. The company also claims that it is able to offer “expressive, realistic voice acting” on-demand for use by game studios.
CEO Zeena Qureshi said that- “Getting dialogue into game development is a slow, expensive and labor-intensive task,” says Qureshi, when asked to define the problem Sonantic wants to solve. “Dialogue pipelines consist of casting, booking studios, contracts, scheduling, editing, directing and a whole lot of coordination. Voiced narrative video games can take up to 10 years to make with the game design changing frequently, defaulting game devs to carry out several iteration cycles — often leading to going over budgets and game releases being delayed” Qureshi said.
To make this situation clear, Sonantic offers what Qureshi dubs “dynamic voice acting on-demand,” with the capability to create the correct kind of nature in terms of personality, gender, accent, tone, and exciting state. The startup is planning to add human quality text-to-speech system features in games. These features will be added via an API and a graphical user interface tool that lets its artificial voice actors be reduced, sculpted and used “just like a human actor,” Qureshi added.
. “We then augment how actors work by offering them a digital version of themselves that can create passive income for them,” explains the Sonantic CEO Zeena Qureshi.
Sonantic startup is offering the faster iteration cycles for the games studios and that too at cheaper prices because it cuts the prices of the logistics. The U.K. based startup has its own SaaS model and API that also makes it easier to make audio performances to test out possible narratives that will add finesse to the story.
In the meantime, Sonantic is at present gearing up to openly reveal how its new technology steps can confine “deep emotions across the full spectrum,”.
