Text-to-Speech Demo 2024 - Microsoft natural and Google AI Voice - Multi-language - SAPI 5 windows 7
espeak is a free text to wav/mp3 file TTS software, and it can be turned into a very useful tool when extra voices are added to it. This video shows a snapshot of the current state of TTS synthesizer as of 2024.
P.S. I am being sarcastic here.
Note:
There are a number of open course TTS engines, but they are just as good as close source. Accessing them is almost next to impossible. This is very similar to a paid-TTS engine. They intentionally try to make it so hard for its users to access their tool. It seems counter-intuitive to create something, then only limits its use to its intended users, especially when it's so-called open source. A commercial application with limitations is understandable, but an open source application with limitations is just corruption. No such thing as free. They still want you to buy them a cup of coffee. This is also understandable. Good applications don't create by themselves, paid or open source.
Microsoft and Google, of course, will not give out their TTS engines free of charge to anyone who needs it. They also intentionally make it very hard for a user to access it, but it’s still more accessible, and much easier to access than those open-source but close-mind TTS engines.
In short, the current state of the TTS engine is not accessible, even though it's very easy and should be freely available. TTS is still accessible on some apps/ecosystem freely.