Months after ElevenLabs received the spotlight for raising $80 million from investors for their remarkable voice-cloning AI, the company has now released the Reader app to allow users to listen to text context in different voices and languages on their devices.
Most people want to be able to listen to text rather than read. The issue is always having to deal with the "fakeness" of the text-to-speech voices that have been around for ages. What ElevenLabs AI provides are voices that actually sound very identical to human voices, and it gets better every day. Now, that is something I would listen to instead.
The Reader app is the first product aimed at consumers, but ElevenLabs has already been powering many voice interactions with their API with different companies, like the voice commands on Rabbit r1. And it allows users to upload any text content, including articles and e-books.
"Creating best in class AI audio models is not enough. Creators need tools through which they can create. And consumers need interfaces through which they can consume audio. Some of these interfaces we build ourselves. Others are built by teams we’ve enabled with our API." ElevenLabs in a blog post.
The closest thing to Reader is Speechify. I personally use Speechify, especially as an extension on Chrome, to listen to articles. And my experience so far has been very impressive. There's a lot of convenience that comes with being able to listen and look elsewhere. I imagine the Reader app to be just as useful, or perhaps even better.
Reader is only available in the United States, UK, and Canada, and only for iOS users for now. Android users have to wait for a few more weeks, but they can join the waitlist here. And although downloads are free, users only get the first three months free.
More features are actually coming to the Reader app, such as downloading content for offline listening, sharing audio snippets with friends, additional languages, an RSS feed, and AI summarisation.
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