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The headline feature isn’t the 25 MB footprint alone. It’s that KittenTTS is Apache-2.0. That combo means you can embed a fully offline voice in Pi Zero-class h

The headline feature isn’t the 25 MB footprint alone. It’s that KittenTTS is Apache-2.0. That combo means you can embed a fully offline voice in Pi Zero-class hardware or even battery-powered toys without worrying about GPUs, cloud calls, or restrictive licenses. In one stroke it turns voice everywhere from a hardware/licensing problem into a packaging problem. Quality tweaks can come later; unlocking that deployment tier is the real game-changer.

CyberDildonics 1y ago
The github just has a few KB of python that looks like an install script. How is this used from C++ ?
defanor 1y ago
A Festival's English model, festvox-kallpc16k, is about 6 MB, and it is a large model; festvox-kallpc8k is about 3.5 MB. eSpeak NG's data files take about 12 MB (multi-lingual). I guess this one may generate more natural-sounding speech, but older or lower-end computers were capable of decent speech synthesis previously as well.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago
  Custom voices could be added, but the speed was more important to some users. $ ls -lh /usr/bin/flite Listed as 27K last I checked. I recall some Blind users were able to decode Gordon 8-bit dialogue at speeds most people found incomprehensible. =3
  - anthk 1y ago
    I'm not blind but spoken English it's far more difficult to grasp than written one (I'm a non-native speaker), and Flite runs on n270 netbooks at crazy speeds with really good enough voices.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
rohan_joshi 1y ago
yeah, we are super excited to build tiny ai models that are super high quality. local voice interfaces are inevitable and we want to power those in the future. btw, this model is just a preview, and the full release next week will be of much higher quality, along w another ~80M model ;)
phh 1y ago
It depends on espeak-ng which is GPLv3
pjc50 1y ago
> KittenTTS is Apache-2.0 What about the training data? Is everyone 100% confident that models are not a derived work of the training inputs now, even if they can reproduce input exactly?
entropie 1y ago
I play around with a nvidia jetson orin nano super right now and its actually pretty usuable with gemma3:4b and quite fast - even image processing is done in like 10-20 seconds but this is with GPU support. When something is not working and ollama is not using the GPU this calls take ages because the cpu is just bad. Iam curious how fast this is with CPU only.
woadwarrior01 1y ago
> It’s that KittenTTS is Apache-2.0 Have you seen the code[1] in the repo? It uses phonemizer[2] which is GPL-3.0 licensed. In its current state, it's effectively GPL licensed. [1]: https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/blob/main/kittentts/onnx_model.py#L3 https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/blob/main/kittentts/on... [2]: https://github.com/bootphon/phonemizer https://github.com/bootphon/phonemizer Edit: It looks like I replied to an LLM generated comment.
- jacereda 1y ago
  https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/issues/17 https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/issues/17
  - dspillett 1y ago
    > IANAL, but AFAICS this leaves 2 options, switching the license or removing that dependency. There is a third option: asking the project for an exception. Though that is unlikely to be granted¹ leaving you back with just the other two options. And of course a forth choice: just ignore the license. This is the option taken by companies like Onyx, whose products I might otherwise be interested in… ---- [1] Those of us who pick GPL3 or AGPL generally do so to keep things definite and an exception would muddy the waters, also it might not even be possible if the project has many maintainers as relicensing would require agreement from all who have provided code that is in the current release. Furthermore, if it has inherited the license from one of its dependencies, an exception is even less practical.
    - woadwarrior01 1y ago
      > There is a third option: asking the project for an exception. IIUC, the project isn't at the liberty to grant such an exception because it inherits its GPL license from espeak-ng.
      - dspillett 1y ago
        Ah, yes, good catch, I didn't look deeper into the dependency tree at all. I'll update my footnote to include that as one of the reasons an exception may be impossible (or at least highly impractical).
deleted 1y ago
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Narishma 1y ago
But Pi Zero has a GPU, so why not make use of it?
- a96 1y ago
  Because then you're stuck on that device only.
ethan_smith 1y ago
This opens up voice interfaces for medical devices, offline language learning tools, and accessibility gadgets for the visually impaired - all markets where cloud dependency and proprietary licenses were showstoppers.

CyberDildonics 1y ago

The github just has a few KB of python that looks like an install script. How is this used from C++ ?

defanor 1y ago

A Festival's English model, festvox-kallpc16k, is about 6 MB, and it is a large model; festvox-kallpc8k is about 3.5 MB. eSpeak NG's data files take about 12 MB (multi-lingual). I guess this one may generate more natural-sounding speech, but older or lower-end computers were capable of decent speech synthesis previously as well.

Joel_Mckay 1y ago
Custom voices could be added, but the speed was more important to some users. $ ls -lh /usr/bin/flite Listed as 27K last I checked. I recall some Blind users were able to decode Gordon 8-bit dialogue at speeds most people found incomprehensible. =3
- anthk 1y ago
  I'm not blind but spoken English it's far more difficult to grasp than written one (I'm a non-native speaker), and Flite runs on n270 netbooks at crazy speeds with really good enough voices.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

rohan_joshi 1y ago

yeah, we are super excited to build tiny ai models that are super high quality. local voice interfaces are inevitable and we want to power those in the future. btw, this model is just a preview, and the full release next week will be of much higher quality, along w another ~80M model ;)

phh 1y ago

It depends on espeak-ng which is GPLv3

pjc50 1y ago

> KittenTTS is Apache-2.0 What about the training data? Is everyone 100% confident that models are not a derived work of the training inputs now, even if they can reproduce input exactly?

entropie 1y ago

I play around with a nvidia jetson orin nano super right now and its actually pretty usuable with gemma3:4b and quite fast - even image processing is done in like 10-20 seconds but this is with GPU support. When something is not working and ollama is not using the GPU this calls take ages because the cpu is just bad. Iam curious how fast this is with CPU only.

woadwarrior01 1y ago

> It’s that KittenTTS is Apache-2.0 Have you seen the code[1] in the repo? It uses phonemizer[2] which is GPL-3.0 licensed. In its current state, it's effectively GPL licensed. [1]: https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/blob/main/kittentts/onnx_model.py#L3 https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/blob/main/kittentts/on... [2]: https://github.com/bootphon/phonemizer https://github.com/bootphon/phonemizer Edit: It looks like I replied to an LLM generated comment.

jacereda 1y ago
https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/issues/17 https://github.com/KittenML/KittenTTS/issues/17
- dspillett 1y ago
  > IANAL, but AFAICS this leaves 2 options, switching the license or removing that dependency. There is a third option: asking the project for an exception. Though that is unlikely to be granted¹ leaving you back with just the other two options. And of course a forth choice: just ignore the license. This is the option taken by companies like Onyx, whose products I might otherwise be interested in… ---- [1] Those of us who pick GPL3 or AGPL generally do so to keep things definite and an exception would muddy the waters, also it might not even be possible if the project has many maintainers as relicensing would require agreement from all who have provided code that is in the current release. Furthermore, if it has inherited the license from one of its dependencies, an exception is even less practical.
  - woadwarrior01 1y ago
    > There is a third option: asking the project for an exception. IIUC, the project isn't at the liberty to grant such an exception because it inherits its GPL license from espeak-ng.
    - dspillett 1y ago
      Ah, yes, good catch, I didn't look deeper into the dependency tree at all. I'll update my footnote to include that as one of the reasons an exception may be impossible (or at least highly impractical).

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

Narishma 1y ago

But Pi Zero has a GPU, so why not make use of it?

a96 1y ago
Because then you're stuck on that device only.

ethan_smith 1y ago

This opens up voice interfaces for medical devices, offline language learning tools, and accessibility gadgets for the visually impaired - all markets where cloud dependency and proprietary licenses were showstoppers.