Episode #112 - My FAVE AI Platform

ElevenLabs has a home run AI platform that keeps getting better.

I have spent MONTHS playing on as many AI platforms as I can. As the AI revolution is very clearly the future, I’ve been busy staying up to speed the best I can. Not only is it super fun to play with new toys but it’s also shocking and delightful to see what it’s possible to do WITH those toys.

But, new AI platforms and their updates spring up every day. Just this week, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic all released new versions of their tools. Great! But I have limited time and limited funds. My strategy is this:

• Sign up as a free user and explore as many platforms as I can

• Become a paid member on the few that I truly love

• Be an evangelist for exactly one.

Today’s episode is about that one: Eleven Labs.

Editorial Note: I wasn’t paid by Eleven Labs to write or talk about their products and platform. They didn't pitch me to do so either, even for free. I don’t accept those offers. If I love a product or service enough to share it publicly, I sometimes earn a commission if you make a purchase. As always: I highlight those affiliate links clearly.

So let’s dig in.

Eleven Labs

I wrote about Eleven Labs back in Episode #106 when I was just a free subscriber to their platform. Back then, I was shocked by how incredible their Reader app sounded. I’d feed it a link from a website and it would read it to me in a voice that sounded light years ahead of Siri, Alexa, Google, and more.

I was also pretty amazed by the Voice Changer Tool.

Since that time, the company’s release a few new tools that have, as before, blown me away.

Voice Cloning

One of my favorite new tools - by far - is the ability to clone your own voice. Yes, the idea sounds a bit creepy, but it’s also remarkable. Once cloned, you can assign your voice to read ANYTHING you like: websites, PDFs, copied text, and more.

There are many practical uses for this, but here are two:

• Content creators can now use their CLONED voice instead or their real one. This is what AI Queen - my term, not hers - Sabrina Romonov does for all of the “headless” videos she posts on social media (these are videos where the creator shows something on screen while they narrate). Only, Sabrina doesn’t “narrate” any more: she just leverages her Eleven Labs voice clone.

• Another nifty option: writers can now offer voice overs, books on tape, podcasts and more. Why record yourself talking — as I always do for my TechTalk podcasts — when you can just copy and paste your text into Eleven Labs! Then, you can just have your voice clone do the reading for you! Bingo! It might even sound like this...

#Fun

And remember, if you hate the sound of your own voice, choose ANY of the other options that Eleven Labs provides. So, if you’ve ever wondered — and you shouldn’t have — what my newsletter might sound like if I were a seductive Indian woman with a British accent, now you’ll know:

Sound Effects

I have a sweet spot in my heart for old time radio, so I occasionally re-enact some old classics with friends. As the producer, I often have to find or create all of the sound effects (SFX) that these shows use. It take a lot of time.

But, perhaps, not for much longer. Eleven Labs’s new tool is exciting glimpse of the future but still needs development. If all you require is a simple sound, the platform is fantastic! Here’s my prompt for “an ominous clock ticking”:

Not bad, right? Well, let’s make the prompt more complex. Here’s what I got for “an ominous clock ticking as the wind blows”:

Meh.

For these reasons, if you’re looking for the best SFX options, I can’t recommend AI solutions just yet. Instead, head over the BBC’s massive sound effects library and get recordings of the real thing! They’ve got tens of thousands of SFX files available, ALL FOR FREE.

AI Generated Music

This week, Eleven Labs introduced AI music. I took a look, tried a few prompts and it's pretty impressive. At the prompt, I typed in the kind of vibe, style, and orchestration that I wanted and boom! The platform created me a 90sec clip based on that prompt. Here’s a 1min clip of the following prompt:

“A cinematic orchestral piece featuring yearning horns that begins with a melancholy mood and gradually builds into a hopeful and strong climax, capturing the spirit of American classical music with open harmonies and rhythmic vitality.”

The resulting song is here to see and listen. Click/tap the play button.

The beginning of the piece reminds me of something I’d hear in “The Lord of the Rings”, don’t you think? It’s definitely cinematic. That being said… could the horns sound more realistic? Sure. Could the transition from a yearning mood to an uplifting one not be so sudden? Yes. But still: it’s incredibly impressive to be able to type a few words and suddenly have a song. But…

If you want to explore - for free! - what I think is the best AI platform for creating music, then look no further than Suno. Here’s a similar prompt to the one I used on Eleven Labs. As you can hear, the resulting song is more clear, organized, and organic sounding. There’s also a lot fewer horns, and an odd ending. Still, Suno provides users with far longer clips to preview than the 60sec you’re given on Eleven Labs.

Still, Eleven Labs music offering is certainly good enough to use for podcasts or other kinds of intros and outros? Absolutely. I can see our son playing with tools like these and creating all kinds of fun videos, picture stories, and more.

It's all very impressive.

The Bottom Line

Eleven Labs offers a free tier and a paid tier. Once I started diving into the voice cloning, dubbing, and text to speech features, I became a paying member and haven’t looked back.

I've been paying $5/mo for a few months now to give the paid features a fair chance and have been impressed. That’s the month to month cost. If I sign up for a yearly plan, that drops to $4.17/mo although it’s all paid up front.

My affiliate link here will take you to the voice cloning page because I think that’s the most remarkable new feature on the platform. Once you sign up — for either a free or paid account — you’ll have access to ALL of the cool ElevenLabs tools.

Go for it. At the very least it’s worth a free account. And I’m guessing some of you will be delighted to explore some of the paid features as well.

Lemme know your thoughts!