As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/m/mai-voice-2/

# MAI-Voice-2 / MAI-Voice-2-Flash

Microsoft, MAI-Voice family. Status: preview. Type: speech and audio. Released: 2026-06-02.

## How to call it

| Provider | Model id | Endpoint | Docs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azure Speech in Microsoft Foundry (SSML voice name) | `en-US-Harper:MAI-Voice-2` | https://{region}.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1 | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-service/mai-voices |
| Azure Speech in Microsoft Foundry (SSML voice name) | `en-US-Harper:MAI-Voice-2-Flash` |  | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-service/mai-voices |
| Azure Voice Live (TTS output) | `MAI-Voice-2-Flash` |  | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-service/voice-live-how-to |
| OpenRouter | `microsoft/mai-voice-2` | https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/audio/speech |  |
| OpenRouter | `microsoft/mai-voice-2-flash` |  |  |
| Web app (MAI Playground) |  |  | https://playground.microsoft.ai/ |

## Pricing

- Per 1M characters: $22
- Per 1M characters, Flash: $15
- Unit as published: USD per 1M characters (MAI-Voice-2 / MAI-Voice-2-Flash, 'starting at')
- Source: https://microsoft.ai/models/mai-voice-2/
- Last checked: 2026-09-29

## Specs

- Input: text
- Output: audio
- Context window: not published
- Max output: not published
- Open weights: no
- Licence: proprietary

## Where it stands

- Newer speech and audio models in the registry since its release: 54. The 5 newest:
  - NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe (30B-A4B) (2026-10-28) https://postcutoff.com/m/nemotron-3-5-transcribe/
  - Hy-SimulMT-30B-A3B (2026-10-22) https://postcutoff.com/m/hy-simulmt-30b-a3b/
  - Eleven Realtime v1 Max / Mini (2026-10-20) https://postcutoff.com/m/eleven-realtime-v1-max/
  - Voxtral Mini Transcribe 3 (+ Mini Transcribe Realtime 3) (2026-10-20) https://postcutoff.com/m/voxtral-mini-transcribe-3/
  - Voxtral Small Transcribe 3 (2026-10-20) https://postcutoff.com/m/voxtral-small-transcribe-3/
- Before it from Microsoft: VibeVoice (ASR, ASR-Streaming, ASR-BitNet, Realtime-0.5B TTS) (2025-08-25) https://postcutoff.com/m/vibevoice/
- After it from Microsoft: MAI-Transcribe-2 (2026-09-03) https://postcutoff.com/m/mai-transcribe-2/
- Closed weights; access is hosted only.

## What stands out

- Gated instant voice cloning: Matches a consented reference voice from a 5-60 s clip without training; only approved (Limited Access) licensed voices can be synthesized. Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-service/mai-voices
- SSML emotion/style control: mstts:express-as styles (angry, fearful, joyful, whispering, shouting, etc.) with styledegree, across 15 languages / 18 locales. Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-service/mai-voices
- Low-latency Flash tier (found after launch): MAI-Voice-2-Flash (public preview from 2026-07-23) targets voice agents/IVR; Microsoft quotes ~225 ms latency vs ~1 s for MAI-Voice-2 (for a 45 s clip). Source: https://microsoft.ai/models/mai-voice-2/

## Notes

Launched at Build 2026-06-02 (MAI-Voice-2); Flash followed 2026-07-23 (date per secondary sources). Both public preview in Azure Speech. Languages include en-US/AU, de, fr, es-ES/MX, pt-BR/PT, it, ko, zh-CN, tr, ru, th, nl, ro, hu, hi. Also used in Copilot (Audio Expressions). Predecessor MAI-Voice-1 no longer listed on the MAI-Voice docs page. Also on Fireworks and Baseten (ids not verified).

Microsoft's in-house expressive TTS, used through standard Azure Speech SSML.

```bash
curl -X POST "https://$REGION.tts.speech.microsoft.com/cognitiveservices/v1" \
  -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: $SPEECH_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/ssml+xml" \
  -H "X-Microsoft-OutputFormat: audio-24khz-160kbitrate-mono-mp3" \
  --data '<speak version="1.0" xml:lang="en-US"><voice name="en-US-Harper:MAI-Voice-2">Hello from MAI Voice.</voice></speak>' -o out.mp3
```

Sources: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-service/mai-voices · https://microsoft.ai/models/mai-voice-2/ · https://microsoft.ai/news/building-a-hillclimbing-machine-launching-seven-new-mai-models/

Model page: https://postcutoff.com/m/mai-voice-2/