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In case you’ve ever began studying an article in your iPhone solely to must drive someplace, stroll, bike, do chores, or in any other case take your eyes off the display — ElevenLabs has an app for you.
The AI audio creation firm based by former Palantir engineers at this time launched its first iOS app, “ElevenLabs Reader: AI Audio.”
In contrast to the total ElevenLabs web site which incorporates quite a lot of totally different AI fashions and options together with text-to-speech, changing speech into different voices and languages, AI dubbing, and AI sound results, the brand new ElevenLabs iOS app is extra narrowly tailor-made and targeted particularly on changing textual content recordsdata or hyperlinks from the online into audio narration that the person can hearken to whereas on the go, or doing one thing else with their eyes and palms, e.g. barbecuing, making dinner, placing away the dishes, and so forth.
Initially, this text-to-speech performance will solely be accessible in English on the app, although a pop over display means that the total 29+ languages ElevenLabs helps on the internet may even be making their approach to its iOS Reader app quickly.
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The app is out there at no cost obtain by the Apple App Retailer and requires iOS 15 or newer variations of the software program.
It requires you to check in with an current ElevenLabs account or create a brand new one together with your electronic mail and password or utilizing your Google or Apple account to log in.
When you do log in, you’re introduced with a listing of pre-loaded textual content recordsdata with accompanying audio narration, most of which look like fairy tales and folklore tales already within the public area corresponding to Cinderella, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Story of Peter Rabbit, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s basic Victorian thriller collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Tapping any of those tales pulls up the textual content and instantly begins the voiceover AI narration, with a inexperienced interactive highlighter following alongside and highlighting every phrase spoken by the AI narrator.
In fact, most of us busy adults produce other issues we have to learn apart from fairy tales, so there’s additionally a plus button within the higher proper hand nook of the app’s fundamental menu that the person can click on on and pull up a menu to “Add content” of their very own, together with writing their very own textual content, importing a URL that they’ve copied and pasted from their cell internet browser, or a file from the iOS recordsdata app.
The app additionally integrates with the iOS default Share Sheet, so the person can add a widget within the share sheet of their iOS Safari browser and share hyperlinks from the browser view to the ElevenLabs iOS Reader app whereas they’re looking, with out having to repeat and paste.
Tapping the 1.0x default pace indicator within the decrease proper hand nook of the app permits the person to extend or lower the pace between 0.8x and 2x. Nevertheless, you’ll be able to’t choose these speeds from a dropdown or scroll menu — as an alternative you simply must faucet to cycle by every one, one after the other, which may very well be a bit annoying for some customers.
Tapping the soundwave icon within the left icon permits the person to select from 11 (natch) totally different voices and accents, from male to feminine, American to Austrian to British English.
Importing a PDF file with visuals and graphics from my iOS Recordsdata app to the ElevenLabs iOS Reader app took just a few seconds in my testing, and the app stripped out all of the visuals, displaying solely textual content. It additionally had some points with formatting that made the narration barely award — pausing at inopportune moments to the road breaks.
I additionally encountered a pair random error messages and failures to transform textual content to audio in my temporary testing.
Nevertheless, the app is model new and can little question be improved quickly. And the precise performance of AI voiceover narration was surprisingly fluid general and extremely correct and compelling. It even labored on VentureBeat articles and a full novel manuscript of 300+ pages.
One massive query is whether or not ElevenLabs captures all/any of the textual content information and recordsdata a person submits to the app, shops them someplace (and if that’s the case, whether or not that’s encrypted and personal storage), and/or trains on the recordsdata a person pastes or uploads. We’ve reached out to the corporate for a solution and can replace after we hear again.