Turn Text into Voice | ElevenLabs

So today I've come across this voice generation tool called ElevenLabs and it’s like the Swiss Army knife of audio creation. You can create or clone voices and it even speaks multiple languages AND translates into multiple languages! ElevenLabs was founded in 2022 by childhood friends Mati Staniszewski (CTO) and Piotr Dabkowski (CEO), who both previously worked at Google and Palantir.

Here's my own testing-testing-1-2-3:

ElevenLabs Features

So here’s the scoop:

1. Speech Synthesis (Text to Speech): Sign up free and boom you’re in the Speech Synthesis playground. Choose a voice, tweak it – you can make it super steady (think monotone) or jazz it up with more expression. Crank up the clarity and similarity settings and you’ll get a voice that’s a dead ringer for the original.

   ElevenLabs offers 4 AI speech models:

   Eleven Turbo v2: Low latency, English only.
   Eleven English v1: Variety of voices and styles, English only.
   Eleven Multilingual v1: Supports 10 languages, lifelike speech.
   Eleven Multilingual v2: Supports 29 languages, high-quality output.

2. Speech-to-Speech Feature: This feature lets you use audio input instead of text. You can convert your speech to a chosen voice by uploading or recording an audio file. This is useful for maintaining the original intonation and emotion, such as for AI covers of songs or multilingual social media content.
3. The Audio Native player: An embeddable player that automatically parses the content of your blog posts and voices it using text-to-speech. Gives your visitors an option of listening to your post instead of reading it. Comes with customazation, branding and metrics.

4. Voice Cloning: Want to clone your own voice or create custom ones? This has you covered. Perfect for animators who need a cast of characters but don’t want to hire a whole troupe of actors (there go peoples' jobs again, right?). Also, you can translate your videos into 29 languages using your voice. The dubbing feature detects the video’s language, translates it, and downloads the output. Nuts!

5. Voice Library: If you want to discover more voices check out their Voice Library, grab a voice and toss it into your Voice Lab for more customization. It’s like having your own digital sound studio. 

   

6. AI Speech Classifier: This tool checks if any audio is AI-generated. Upload your file, and it will analyze and display AI-generated parts.
7. Sound Effects now too! This is actually next level cool. You can generate your own or browse those others have created.  

   

Translate Your Audio

I find this feature most exciting. Gone are the days when your audience was limited to speakers of your language. Now you can extend your reach by simply translating not just text, but your speech. Just follow these simple steps to translate audio using ElevenLabs:

1. Choose Your Target Language

   • Select from 29 target languages.

2. Upload Your File

   • Upload an MP3, MP4, or other file formats up to 25MB.
   • You can also insert URLs from YouTube, Twitter, TikTok or Vimeo.

3. Dub the Audio

   • Wait a few seconds for the audio to be dubbed.

4. Download and Share

   • View and download the translated audio to share with your audience.

ElevenLabs Pricing Plans

They have plans from free to pro and both monthly and annual options.

The free plan gets you the basics with limited daily credits, just enough to test how things work.

via GIPHY

For $5 per month, the ElevenLabs Starter plan provides:

• Access to all features
• 30,000-character output capacity
• 10 custom voice slots
• Voice cloning feature
• Commercial license for outputs

This plan is ideal for those who want comprehensive access to ElevenLabs' capabilities at an affordable price. If you purchase annual plan it's even cheaper.

If you’re a content creator or running a business the advanced plans come with perks like higher character limits, commercial licenses and top notch audio quality. 

Get Started with ElevenLabs

If you need an AI assistant for audio and voice tasks, ElevenLabs is perfect for you. Here's how to get started:

1. Visit the ElevenLabs Website

2. Click the "Sign-Up" button.

3. Create your account or continue with Google, Facebook, or GitHub.

Once you've signed up, you'll have access to all of ElevenLabs' AI features to help you with your audio and voice-based tasks.

Pro tip: disable your VPN when registering/signing in on their website or you might get blocked (turning VPN off fixes this immediately though):

Overall a very neat tool for humanlike voice and realistic sound effects generation with clean, intuitive user interface. It lets you translate and automate the process for social media content and other creative projects. Give it a try if you’ve got something audio coming up.