[In-Depth] Azure AI Avatar Review: Price, Steps and Best Alternatives

Do you need digital speakers for your business that look like real people? Azure AI avatars will do it. It allows you to make interesting digital avatars, which changes how businesses connect with their customers. If you are interested in this tool’s key features, pricing, and steps to creating a realistic AI avatar, this post will definitely be a comprehensive review.

Let’s break down all details about the Azure AI avatar creator. To save your efforts, we will also provide 3 more alternatives to easily choose from.

On This Page

• What is the Azure AI Avatar?
  Key Features

  Pricing

  Pros & Cons
• How to Create an Azure AI Avatar? [Step Guide]
  Step 1. Create an Azure Account

  Step 2. Choose an Azure AI Avatar

  Step 3. Input Your Text That Needed to be Converted to Speech

  Step 4. Click to Build a Speaking Azure AI Avatar
• 3 Best Alternatives to Azure AI Avatar Creator [With Free Choice]
  1. Vidnoz AI: Talking AI Avatars for Any Use [Free Plans Available]

  2. HeyGen: Speaking AI Avatars for Live Chats

  3. Synthesia: Text-to-Speech AI Avatars in Studio Quality

  Conclusion

What is the Azure AI Avatar?

Azure, developed by Microsoft, is a cloud computing platform that is designed for developers. In 2023, Azure released many AI services, including the Azure AI text to speech avatar, allowing all users to access and customize their preferred business models.

AI Avatar uses advanced TTS and AI technology. It will not only convert texts into speech, but also let the AI avatar deliver the speech with lifelike AI voices.

Azure AI avatar creator works well on many occasions. With avatars responding to questions, business owners can use it for real-time customer service; with AI avatars’ movements and expression, content creators can put them into videos and gives audience more engaging watching experience; with the advanced interactive features, you can use it as a virtual teacher that interact with students in real-time…Generally, Azure AI avatars especially perform good for commercial uses.

Key Features

• Provides Speaking AI Avatar Services for Live Chats

Azure AI avatars are available for live chat, which means the AI avatars can interact with users in real-time.

• Customizable AI Speaking Avatars

You can adjust the AI avatars’ speaking speed, body posture, facial expressions, and even add some hand gestures. This level of customization makes each AI avatar look extremely realistic and natural. Thus, you can totally shape a perfect virtual representation that fits your businesses and personality.

Also read: Make Avatar for Business with 5 Tools & Set Your Brand Up for Success Using AI! >>

• Collection of Pre-Built AI Avatars

Azure AI Avatar offers a wide range of prebuilt avatars, such as different genders, nationality, and others, enabling you to choose from different styles and appearances without extensive customization. 

• Multilingual Supports

The tool offers impressive language versatility, making AI avatars to communicate in multiple languages. So you can use it to reach out to global users.

• Real-time Synthesis Capabilities

This feature enables prompt responses and natural-sounding speech to go on smoothly without delays.

Pricing

Azure AI avatar creator offers the service that combines TTS and AI avatar making, so it charges your plan according to the services you selected. Here’re details:

Professional Voice Pricing:

• Synthesis (real-time and batch): Start from $24 for 1 million characters;
• Voice model training: Start from $52 for a compute hour, with a maximum of $4,992 per training session;
• Endpoint hosting: Start from $4.04 per hour (per model).

Standard Avatar Pricing:

• Interactive avatar (real-time): Stat from $0.50 per minute.

Pros & Cons

How to Create an Azure AI Avatar? [Step Guide]

Step 1. Create an Azure Account

Begin by setting up your Azure account and purchasing the necessary AI services. You'll specifically need to acquire either a “Speech Service”  or “Cognitive Services” resource subscription to access the basic Azure AI avatar creator features.

Step 2. Choose an Azure AI Avatar

Azure AI avatar creator provides a diverse collection of premade AI avatars that are ready-to-go. Besides, there are more options, like changing backgrounds, for professional scenario uses.

If there’s no AI avatar that matches your needs, you can custom one by accessing the custom text-to-speech avatar feature.

Step 3. Input Your Text That Needed to be Converted to Speech

Once your avatar is selected, enter the text you want your avatar to speak. The tool supports many languages and gives a wide variety of realistic AI voice models:

You can adjust the speaking style and tone to ensure your message is conveyed as intended.

Step 4. Click to Build a Speaking Azure AI Avatar

In the final step, you can just click the button to generate. You can then download the finished video featuring your AI avatar speaking and moving like a real human presenter:

3 Best Alternatives to Azure AI Avatar Creator [With Free Choice]

1. Vidnoz AI: Talking AI Avatars for Any Use [Free Plans Available]

Vidnoz AI Avatar is a powerful alternative. Like the Azure AI avatar, you can find many realistic AI avatars easily. If you want to make an AI twin of yourself (or of other), this tool gives you 3 different plans to make AI talking avatars:

• Avatar Lite: This is a free feature. You can create your digital representation with easy steps. Your AI avatars will be put in a background that is fixed.
• Avatar Pro: This plan will custom an AI avatar with transparent background, so you can export it for any occasions. It will create a high-quality speaking AI avatar totally based on your preference and even build you a unique AI voice model.
• Photo Avatar: This free feature will make your photos (realistic, cartoon or any style) into talking heads instantly. This is more suitable for casual uses.

Besides, Vidnoz AI allows you to turn-on the “Conversational Mode”, which lets you insert dual AI avatars into videos. The dual avatars talk as real humans do, creating engaging conversational videos. This unique and advanced feature is perfect for making interview practice and mocking presentations.

Create Your AI Talking Avatar - FREE

• 1500+ realistic AI avatars of different races
• Vivid lip-syncing AI voices & gestures
• Support 140+ languages with multiple accents

Create an AI Avatar

2. HeyGen: Speaking AI Avatars for Live Chats

Unlike other pre-recorded AI avatar makers, you can find interactive avatars on HeyGen. To interact with those avatars, you can type-in questions in the chat or directly speak to them. Then smart AI avatars can understand your questions and give your instant answers.

But it does have some drawbacks. It understands input texts by recognizing the keywords. So if you don’t train the AI avatars in advance, they may mislead your customers. And since the conversation has no actual time limits, you may have to pay much to maintain stability and coherence for the long conversations.

3. Synthesia: Text-to-Speech AI Avatars in Studio Quality

Synthesia can create studio-quality AI avatars that move, speak, and express realistically. Of course, these AI avatars will perform like a real human by changing facial expressions and gestures naturally.

By entering your text and picking a talking avatar, you can edit wonderful videos with natural AI studio avatars. On Synthesia, you can create a speaking avatar for your brands in minutes or directly apply the expressive AI avatar. But this tool is expensive for low frequency uses.

Also read: Steps to Creating Studio Avatars with 3 Best AI Avatar Creators in Clicks! >>

Conclusion

Azure AI avatar allows you to find not only common speaking avatars, but also more intellectual interactive avatars to make engaging contents that connect your viewers. Customized features offered by Azure, from advanced text- to-speech to real-time interactions, give ideal solutions for business owners, video creators, and online educators.

But Azure AI avatar creator is a bit expensive for startups, so we list other alternatives, like Vidnoz, HeyGen, and Synthesia, which have their own distinct features for various needs.

Now, you might have your own choice, just go ahead and upscale your content with speaking AI avatars now!