The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Audio streaming service Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) announced Monday its acquisition of Sonantic, a startup that uses AI to simulate the human voice. Sonantic was in the spotlight recently for helping create Val Kilmer’s voice dialogues in “Top Gun: Maverick,” because the actor is unable to speak due to throat cancer. (Hollywood Reporter)

Sonantic simulated Kilmer’s speech using past audio recordings of his voice that were processed by an AI model. The model could then create realistic sounding speech from a new script given to it.

Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn founded the London-based startup in 2018.

Sonantic raised $2.4 million in seed funding in 2020 from investors including EQT Ventures, Entrepreneur First (EF), AME Cloud Ventures, Bart Swanson of Horizons Ventures, Twitch’s Kevin Lin, Jeremy Jap, Charles Jolley and others.

“We’re really excited about the potential to bring Sonantic’s AI voice technology onto the Spotify platform and create new experiences for our users,” said Ziad Sultan, Spotify’s Vice President of Personalization. “This integration will enable us to engage users in a new and even more personalized way.”

For example, Spotify feels Sonantic’s technology could allow the streaming platform to advise on upcoming recommendations when users are not looking at their screens.

“We believe in the power voice has and its ability to foster a deeper connection with listeners around the world, and we know we can be better than ever on the world’s largest audio platform,” said Sonantic co-founders Zeena Qureshi and John Flynn in a joint statement.

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Image of Val Kilmer: Val Kilmer Facebook