Artificial IntelligenceTuesday, November 3, 20261 min read

Building ultra-low-latency voice AI applications on AWS

By Engineering Blogs · Published by Everything Blog

In short

The deployment centers on Cartesia's two flagship offerings, including the Sonic text-to-speech engine and the Ink speech-to-text transcription system. Unlike transformer systems that require caching previous tokens, State Space Models utilize a compact, fixed-size hidden state that processes audio step by step. Sonic can return its initial audio byte in roughly 90 milliseconds while delivering studio-quality sound. These capabilities directly serve industries like telehealth, customer service, gaming, and accessibility, where conversational timing is critical.

Key points

State Space Models avoid the quadratic scaling issues of transformers by maintaining a co…: State Space Models avoid the quadratic scaling issues of transformers by maintaining a compact, fixed-size hidden state.
Continuous sequence processing allows native audio streaming while avoiding the historica…: Continuous sequence processing allows native audio streaming while avoiding the historical signal decay common to recurrent networks.
Ultra-low latency voice synthesis targets sensitive use cases like gaming non-player char…: Ultra-low latency voice synthesis targets sensitive use cases like gaming non-player characters, contact centers, telehealth, and accessibility screen readers.

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Artificial Intelligence

Building ultra-low-latency voice AI applications on AWS

Conversational AI is transforming how humans interact with technology. From virtual assistants and AI-powered contact centers to real-time translation and accessibility tools, voice-first interfaces are rapidly becoming the default mode of interaction for millions of users worldwide.

Yet delivering a truly natural voice experience remains one of the hardest challenges in AI infrastructure. Users expect human-like responsiveness. Excess latency can break conversational flow and erode trust. To feel natural, AI-generated speech must arrive within the same temporal window as human turn-taking.

This post introduces how Cartesia, an AWS Partner specializing in real-time voice AI, uses purpose-built State Space Models (SSMs) and AWS infrastructure to deliver sub-100ms text-to-speech and speech-to-text at global scale. Developers can build voice experiences that feel indistinguishable from human conversation.

The rise of conversational AI and latency expectations

The demand for real-time voice AI is growing rapidly across industries:

- Contact centers: AI agents handling millions of customer interactions require instantaneous speech generation to maintain natural dialogue.

- Telehealth: Remote patient consultations demand low-latency voice for accurate, empathetic…

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Key Points

State Space Models avoid the quadratic scaling issues of transformers by maintaining a co…: State Space Models avoid the quadratic scaling issues of transformers by maintaining a compact, fixed-size hidden state.
Continuous sequence processing allows native audio streaming while avoiding the historica…: Continuous sequence processing allows native audio streaming while avoiding the historical signal decay common to recurrent networks.
Ultra-low latency voice synthesis targets sensitive use cases like gaming non-player char…: Ultra-low latency voice synthesis targets sensitive use cases like gaming non-player characters, contact centers, telehealth, and accessibility screen readers.

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Artificial Intelligence

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AI Analysis

Tone

Positive

In short

Key Points

State Space Models avoid the quadratic scaling issues of transformers by maintaining a co…: State Space Models avoid the quadratic scaling issues of transformers by maintaining a compact, fixed-size hidden state.
Continuous sequence processing allows native audio streaming while avoiding the historica…: Continuous sequence processing allows native audio streaming while avoiding the historical signal decay common to recurrent networks.
Ultra-low latency voice synthesis targets sensitive use cases like gaming non-player char…: Ultra-low latency voice synthesis targets sensitive use cases like gaming non-player characters, contact centers, telehealth, and accessibility screen readers.

Topics

Artificial Intelligence

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Building ultra-low-latency voice AI applications on AWS

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