KittenTTS: A 25MB AI Voice Model? Open-Source, Free, and Runs on Your Phone!

The Kitten ML team has shockingly released an ultra-lightweight text-to-speech (TTS) model, KittenTTS. The preview version is only 25MB but comes with 8 vivid voices. Most importantly, it’s completely open-source, free, and can even run smoothly on Raspberry Pi and mobile phones, bringing new possibilities for developers and AI enthusiasts.

In today’s era of rapid AI development, high-quality text-to-speech (TTS) models often mean huge model files, a reliance on high-end hardware (especially GPUs), and expensive licensing fees. But what if there was a model that broke all these rules?

Recently, a team called Kitten ML dropped a bombshell in the tech community. They released a preview version of a brand-new open-source TTS model—KittenTTS—which instantly sparked heated discussions among developers on GitHub and Hugging Face.

Why is it so special? Because it’s incredibly small and completely free.

So, What Exactly is KittenTTS?

Simply put, KittenTTS is an AI model that converts text into natural-sounding speech. But it’s not one of those behemoths that require powerful servers to run. The preview version released by the Kitten ML team, kitten-tts-nano-0.1, has only about 15 million parameters, and the entire file size is less than 25MB!

What does that mean? It’s about the size of a few high-resolution photos. Such a small package holds surprising power.

Small Size, Big Surprise: The Core Advantages of KittenTTS

How good can a model under 25MB sound? Honestly, many were skeptical before seeing the actual results. But KittenTTS’s performance is truly impressive.

Eight Lively and Expressive Voices

The preview version comes with eight carefully tuned English voices, including four female and four male voices. These are not monotonous robotic readings; they have a considerable amount of expressiveness and emotion. For such a tiny model to achieve this level of liveliness is truly remarkable.

Incredibly Small Size

This is definitely the most attractive feature of KittenTTS. The currently released preview version has about 15M parameters (<25MB), and according to official news, the full version to be released next week will only have about 80M parameters. This means its hardware resource consumption is extremely low.

It Really Runs Everywhere!

Forget the slogans about “no GPU needed”—KittenTTS lowers the entry barrier to a whole new level. It can run not only on a regular CPU but also smoothly generate speech on microcomputers like the Raspberry Pi, and even on mobile phones.

For many developers, students, or hobbyists with limited budgets, this is undoubtedly fantastic news. You no longer need expensive hardware to integrate high-quality voice functions into your projects.

Long Live Open Source! Completely Free to Use

Yes, you read that right. KittenTTS is completely open-source. This means anyone can download, use, and even modify its source code for free, whether for personal projects or commercial applications. This open approach will undoubtedly greatly promote the development of the community and the popularization of the model.

Tech Deep Dive: How Did They Do It?

KittenTTS seems to adopt the G2P (Grapheme-to-Phoneme) technical path. This may sound a bit complicated, but the principle is actually quite intuitive.

• Grapheme: Refers to the written unit of a language, such as the English letter ‘c’.
• Phoneme: Refers to the smallest unit of sound in a language, such as the /k/ sound of ‘c’ in “cat”.

The role of G2P is to first convert the input text (graphemes) into a set of standard phonetic symbols (phonemes) before generating speech. This allows the model to know more accurately how each word should be pronounced, thus generating a more natural and clearer tone. This is one of the keys to maintaining good quality at a small size.

Future Roadmap: What’s Next for KittenTTS?

The Kitten ML team has also generously shared their development roadmap, with the current progress as follows:

• Release preview model (Completed)
• Release full training model (Expected next week)
• Release mobile device SDK
• Launch web service

From this roadmap, it is clear that the team’s goal is very specific: to make KittenTTS more powerful and easier to use. The future mobile device SDK and web version will allow more users without a programming background to experience it easily. In addition, the officials also mentioned that future versions are expected to support multiple languages, which makes people even more excited.

Conclusion: Why Should You Pay Attention to KittenTTS?

The emergence of KittenTTS is not just about having another new TTS tool. It proves that in the field of AI, high performance and lightweight are not mutually exclusive.

Its small size, cross-platform capability, excellent expressiveness, and, most importantly, its open-source spirit, together form a very attractive choice. Whether you are a developer looking for a voice solution, a student curious about AI technology, or just a tech enthusiast, KittenTTS is worthy of your attention.

Let’s look forward to the release of its full version and the changes it will bring to AI voice technology!