Artificial intelligence-powered audio maker ElevenLabs has brought its synthetic voices to the iPhone with a new iOS app. The ElevenLabs Reader app reads out any uploaded text or website using the ElevenLabs library of synthetic and cloned voices, even your own if you wish.
The new app essentially turns books, website content, and other text into a kind of podcast hosted by whatever voice you want to hear. Users can listen to content by pasting a link, copying text, uploading a file or selecting one of the pre-loaded stories, which are then read aloud in the chosen voice from the library. The stories are public domain and come true Project Gutenbergincluding ‘Cinderella’, ‘The Story of Peter Rabbit’ and ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’.
As for the voices, users can choose based on accent, style and tone to match the text. That might mean switching from a warm, friendly voice reading a bedtime story to a child to a lively, authoritative voice reading a scientific study. The app can run in the background as an audiobook or podcast and is clearly aimed at those who are multitasking, at least based on the promotional video.
Tell your life
The ElevenLabs Reader app narrates only in English and only in the US, Canada and the UK for now. The company said it is “working to broaden access, adding content downloading and audio sharing features, and adding all 29 languages available in ElevenLabs’ broader library thanks to its multilingual AI model. The app is included with a subscription to the ElevenLabs platform, although you can get three months of free access without an account. An Android version is also coming soon, with an early access waitlist you can sign up for.
“Our mission is to make content accessible in every language and voice, and everything we do is focused on achieving that mission,” explains Sam Sklar, head of growth at ElevenLabs, in a blog after about the new app. “Creating best-in-class AI audio models isn’t enough. Creators need tools that let them create. And consumers need interfaces that let them consume audio.”