Convert text to speech

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Generate natural-sounding audio from text using OpenAI’s text-to-speech models.

Problem

You need to convert text content into spoken audio—for accessibility, content repurposing, or voice applications.

Solution

What’s in this recipe:

Generate speech with OpenAI TTS
Choose from multiple voice options
Store text and audio together

You add a computed column that converts text to audio. The audio is cached and only regenerated when the source text changes.

Setup

%pip install -qU pixeltable openai

import getpass
import os

if 'OPENAI_API_KEY' not in os.environ:
    os.environ['OPENAI_API_KEY'] = getpass.getpass('OpenAI API Key: ')

import pixeltable as pxt
from pixeltable.functions.openai import speech

# Create a fresh directory
pxt.drop_dir('tts_demo', force=True)
pxt.create_dir('tts_demo')

Connected to Pixeltable database at: postgresql+psycopg://postgres:@/pixeltable?host=/Users/pjlb/.pixeltable/pgdata
Created directory ‘tts_demo’.
<pixeltable.catalog.dir.Dir at 0x17f0d5bd0>

Create text-to-speech pipeline

# Create table for articles
articles = pxt.create_table(
    'tts_demo/articles', {'title': pxt.String, 'content': pxt.String}
)

Created table ‘articles’.

# Add audio generation column
articles.add_computed_column(
    audio=speech(articles.content, model='tts-1', voice='alloy')
)

Added 0 column values with 0 errors.
No rows affected.

Generate audio

# Insert sample articles
sample_articles = [
    {
        'title': 'Welcome to AI',
        'content': 'Artificial intelligence is transforming how we work and live. From smart assistants to autonomous vehicles, AI is becoming part of our daily lives.',
    },
    {
        'title': 'Getting Started',
        'content': 'To begin your journey with machine learning, start by understanding the basics of data preparation and model training.',
    },
]

articles.insert(sample_articles)

Inserting rows into `articles`: 2 rows [00:00, 423.90 rows/s]
Inserted 2 rows with 0 errors.
2 rows inserted, 6 values computed.

# View articles with generated audio
articles.select(
    articles.title, articles.content, articles.audio
).collect()

Explanation

OpenAI TTS models:

Voice options:

Tips:

Use tts-1 for drafts and real-time applications
Use tts-1-hd for final production audio
Audio is cached—no regeneration on queries

Welcome to Pixeltable

Tools

Core Concepts

How-To

Problem

Solution

Setup

Create text-to-speech pipeline

Generate audio

Explanation

See also

​Problem

​Solution

​Setup

​Create text-to-speech pipeline

​Generate audio

​Explanation

​See also

Problem

Solution

Setup

Create text-to-speech pipeline

Generate audio

Explanation

See also