Anyone who regularly listens to audiobooks knows that a good narrator can make the difference between loving and hating the book. ElevenLabs hopes that reviving some iconic voices from the past will create an entirely new experience.
Using the ElevenLabs platform, one of the leaders in artificial intelligence in sound, you can easily clone your voice from a minute or two of audio. You can then use this voice clone in apps or to read your children a bedtime story when you are not around to do it yourself.
The company unveiled its Reader app for iPhone last week, offering the ability to have anything from a website to an entire novel read to you by one of a number of licensed and synthetic voices. The voices sound natural and engaging, almost indistinguishable from natural human voices.
The first iconic voices include Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and Sir Laurence Olivier. ElevenLabs says all voice clones were created in collaboration with the actors’ estates and are fully licensed for use in the Reader app.
What is the ElevenLabs Reader?
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ElevenLabs Reader is an impressive iPhone app that lets you listen to anything you want. It has a library of thousands of different voices. You can send a link to a story, school report, or even an eBook and have it read to you, even when your phone is locked.
It’s currently only available for iPhone and in the US and UK, but ElevenLabs says it’s working on an Android version and plans to launch it in more countries soon.
When you open the app, you’ll be presented with a list of recent stories and you can choose between loading text, links or files. You also have a ‘Voices’ tab at the bottom with a library of original voices, synthetic voices, cloned voices and now iconic voices to choose from.
There are storytellers that are a perfect fit for an e-book, a wide range of accents, and even quieter voices for meditation and yoga readings. And if you want to recreate the podcast sound, they have radio presenter style voices too.
What are the iconic voices?
Introducing ElevenLabs Iconic Voices. Listen to your favorite books and articles with voices from Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Laurence Olivier on our reader app. The app is completely free to download and use. Get it here: https://t.co/uooD5LVm6i pic.twitter.com/US5vIJ22ABJuly 2, 2024
ElevenLabs has signed a deal with the estates of some of the most famous actors in history, including Judy Garland and Laurence Olivier.
The cloned voices are impressively accurate and can be used anywhere in the app. I had Olivier read “1984,” which adds a whole new dimension to the George Orwell classic.
“It is exciting to see that our mother’s voice is now available to the countless millions of people who love her. Our family is confident that ElevenLabs’ spectacular new technology will bring new fans to Mama and will also be exciting for those who already appreciate the unparalleled legacy that Mama has left and continues to leave to the world,” said Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland’s daughter and representative of the Garland Estate.
It’s not clear if we’ll see more voices in the future, but since ElevenLabs says they hope to “bring more great talent to the platform soon,” I suspect the answer is yes. Dustin Blank, Head of Partnerships at ElevenLabs, said, “Adding them to our growing roster of speakers is a huge step forward in our mission to make content accessible in every language and voice.”
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