iHeartMedia Will Translate English Podcasts Into Other Languages Using Veritone’s Synthetic Voices

Looking to widen its podcast biz beyond English-language audiences, iHeartMedia inked a deal to use Veritone’s synthetic-voice technology to translate and produce podcasts in other languages.

Initially, iHeart plans to use Veritone’s artificial-intelligence system to translate its most popular podcasts into Spanish across the iHeartPodcast Network. The company said among the podcasts first in line for translation en español are “Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know,” “Tech Stuff” and “Ridiculous History.”

Overall, Veritone offers stock voices in 119 languages and customized voices in 13: Chinese (Mandarin, simplified), French (Canada and France), German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish (Mexico and Spain). Its verified synthetic voices also provide different dialects and accents. According to Veritone, its synthetic voice solution offers custom “voice cloning” training to replicate that of an individual speaker.

Under the pact, the two companies also are partnering to develop synthetic voices for advertising and other content.

With Veritone’s synthetic voice solution, “iHeartMedia will not only be able to scale to new markets with localized language translations but retain the brand value of their top talent’s voice — which is fundamental in podcasting,” Veritone president Ryan Steelberg said in a statement.

Conal Byrne, CEO of iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group, added, “Being able to easily offer our podcasts in other languages, in the talents’ unique style, will be an awesome and innovative way to grow market share in the global marketplace.”

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