ElevenLabs, a leading artificial intelligence speech platform, has recently released a new iPhone app that allows you to listen to anything from a complete novel to the contents of a website.
The new ElevenLabs Reader App is not just another text-to-speech app. It offers a unique feature-a vast voice library of cloned and synthetic sounds, including the ability to clone your own voice.
Positive Feedback
The software has received positive feedback from beta testers, with many praising the quality and consistency of the voices, particularly for longer pieces. Some visually impaired users found the programme especially useful, with one describing it as quite helpful for viewing print materials.
However, several viewers reported formatting flaws that made the narration odd, such as pausing at unsuitable periods due to line breaks. Some users also encountered a couple random error messages and failures to convert text to audio.
Was There Really A Need?
Popular apps like Pocket, Matter, and Instapaper already include text-to-speech capabilities. Apple Books already has an AI-based narration capability for eBooks, but ElevenLabs Reader takes the capabilities well beyond digital books. The new programme allows iPhone and iPad users to listen to any article, book, webpage, or document on the go.
ElevenLabs also provides a full-fledged website with capabilities beyond merely converting text to speech, such as turning speech into other voices and languages, AI dubbing, and AI sound effects.
ElevenLabs reader currently only supports narration in English. However, the mobile app will soon include all 29+ languages supported by ElevenLabs' website.
Future Prospects
With this release, the AI-voice unicorn enters the mainstream consumer market. It illustrates how its technology can be utilised for uses other than audiobook narration and voice acting in video games. The company raised $80 million from a $1.1 billion financing round in January.
So far, most of its deals have focused on audio-centric content, such as a partnership with HarperCollins Publishers to create audio versions of back-catalogue books in many languages.
The business has ambitious plans for its dubbing technology, aiming to sell it to YouTube creators, movie studios, and news publishers. This opens up exciting possibilities for the future of audio-centric content creation.
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