Even as OpenAI delays its text to speech feature for ChatGPT, AI audio startup ElevenLabs released its Reader app for iOS on Wednesday, a model that promises to read aloud the words from virtually any content source, including news articles, PDFs, ePubs, and newsletters — even paste-in web links.
Today we’re launching the ElevenLabs iOS app!
It lets you listen to any article, book, or doc using our AI generated voices.
Check it out 🚀 pic.twitter.com/zQ9ISG8NUn
— Ammaar Reshi (@ammaar) June 25, 2024
Users will be able to select from a library of “high quality, human-like voices,” to listen to and will be able to control how quickly the AI-modulated voice reads text back to them. The Reader app is available on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch (anything running iOS and iPadOS 15 or later) for users in the U.S., U.K., and Canada to start. The company plans to release the software in the E.U. “in a couple weeks” around July 11. An Android version is currently in the works, and the company is offering a waitlist for interested users.
ElevenLabs is already considering updates for the service, including offline playback, RSS feed access, AI summarization, and the ability to share snippets with friends. The company is also looking to expand the spoken languages to all 29 tongues supported by its multilingual model.
“Creating best in class AI audio models is not enough,” ElevenLabs’ Wednesday announcement reads. “Creators need tools through which they can create. And consumers need interfaces through which they can consume audio.” The company will eventually begin charging for the service (given that its website states the first three months of usage are free) though there’s no word yet on what that subscription could cost.
ElevenLabs’ AI generated voice models are trained on public domain data, data acquired in agreements with commercial partners, and publicly available data, per a previous Digital Trends report. With them, the company is able to offer a variety of services, from dubbing and automatic translation to voice cloning and automatic narration — even generating AI voices for NPCs built on the Unreal Engine.
Motorola has built some of my favorite foldables and flagship phones. I had a great time with both the Razr Fold and last year's Signature. So when the company began teasing the Signature 27, I couldn't help be excited. The new model comes with Qualcomm's blazing-fast Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, and better still, it is finally getting a proper global release.
One of the reasons I was obsessed with the last-gen Signature was its amazing price tag. But it seems like that budget flagship dream might be officially dead. Portuguese retailer MegaPC has prematurely listed a 12GB RAM and 512GB storage Signature 27 in Pantone Coal Smoke for €1,594.90 (approx. $1,775).
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.