Microsoft adds streaming transcription and two voice models to its MAI lineup
Released October 1st, the models target voice agents with incremental transcripts and two speech-generation options priced by usage.
By Ryan Merket · Published
Primary source: Microsoft AI on X
Why it matters
The launch gives Microsoft a priced, in-house option for both sides of a voice agent conversation. Its streaming transcription tier costs substantially more than batch transcription, putting a clear price on the lower-latency use case.
Microsoft added streaming transcription and two text-to-speech models to its MAI lineup on October 1st, giving developers a set of Microsoft-built components for voice agents that need to listen and respond with less delay. The three models, announced in a Microsoft AI post on X, are MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming, MAI-Voice-2.1 and MAI-Voice-2.1-Flash. Microsoft said they were available that day.