Move over, ElevenLabs and OpenAI—there’s a new contender in the text-to-speech arena, and it’s not another corporate black box. Dia, a 1.6B-parameter open-source model from Nari Labs, is here to make proprietary TTS sound like a robotic hostage tape.
Why Dia Matters (And Why You Should Care)
Most open-source TTS models sound like they were trained on a diet of dial-up modem noises and 90s GPS voices. Dia, however, claims to outperform ElevenLabs and Google’s NotebookLM in natural dialogue—and it’s free, Apache 2.0-licensed, and actually lets you control things like emotional tone, nonverbal cues, and even clone your own voice (with ethical guardrails, of course). 🔊 Key Features:
- Expressive control (unlike OpenAI’s one-note monotone parade).
- Voice cloning—but bans deepfake shenanigans (take notes, scammy startups).
- Reproducible (unlike the “trust us, it’s magic” approach of closed models).
The Catch? (There’s Always One)
It’s English-only for now, and Nari Labs is literally two engineers—though they’re backed by Google Cloud’s TPUs. Whether this scales or gets acqui-hushed remains to be seen.
The Bottom Line
If you’re tired of paying $30/month for ElevenLabs’ API or waiting for OpenAI to decide which features you’re “ready” for, Dia is a breath of fresh, open air. 🎙️ Just don’t expect Big AI to let this slide without a fight.