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Ask HN: Are you using Voice AI?

11 points by jkaykin ↗ HN
Has anyone here been playing around with or using Voice AI (like elevenlabs.io)? There's all this talk about ChatGPT/GPT-4/LLMs but not as much about Voice AI. It feels like there's so much opportunity here so it got me thinking: how will we be using this tech in the near future?

A few applications:

Real Estate - cold calling at scale to market properties for sale, find off-market properties, etc

Ecommerce - calls to cart abandoners, marketing newly launched products, etc

Appointment Reminders - doctors, spas, barbers, workout classes, etc. Anything where you have to make an appointment, you'll get a reminder.

Politics/Local Government - announcements from local officials/representatives, election announcements, candidate pushes, etc

How else do you think Voice AI will be used? How else have you seen it used? Any applications of it you're excited about?

16 comments

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PaulHoule
I’d like a TTS which is emotionally expressive and can be used for video game characters.
jkaykin
Very interesting. Are you imagining this as an API that can be used for video game characters?
tmaly
I have not had any luck getting TTS working. Some strange runtime errors.
7373737373
It's sad there is still not a free, open source, good and trivial to install TTS on Linux. Espeak often still remains the only practical option
shw1n
We use it in our product: www.dopplio.com

It lets users generate personalized sales videos quickly, saves my wife about two hours per day

froglets
I expect scam callers will be using it.
flangola7
Not my project but I saw one to let individuals speak to late loved ones, and as a feature for funeral homes or cemeteries.
dejobaan
I've used TTS in a proof-of-concept streaming show about Steam games (GPT-3.5 plus ElevenLabs voices): https://www.twitch.tv/totallyhumanshow

Right now this just plays a canned video on loop—the only thing standing in the way of it auto-generating a new show each day/hour is cost of ElevenLabs TTS; I'd go over quota pretty quickly. I imagine the cost will come down.

JimtheCoder
Do people still answer their (cell)phones nowadays?

If my day was interrupted by a call from a number I recognized and I got an AI generated voice, I would be pissed.

Just because you can, it doesn't mean you should...

taf2
What if you had just filled out a form in an app for help. Maybe you got a text and then a call... would you be pissed then?
JimtheCoder
If I was expecting a call, then no...I would not be pissed. If they explicitly said I would be receiving a call from an AI customer support person, then no. If I was expecting a human and got an AI, then yes. I think it is about user expectations in this situation.

But, I am not sure this is what the OP was hinting at.

Also, if you are going to use an AI to help me with an app, why not just deliver the help...through the app? Why the extra step?

serjester
Even as someone that’s generally pretty libertarian, this is an area that I hope gets regulated quickly. A person needs to have the right to know if they’re talking to a real person or an AI system.

Personally I’ve used ElevenLabs to narrate some videos.

ksubedi
Our company https://echo.win/ provides inbound phone call automation and management using AI for businesses. Generative voices are going to add a lot of value to our product.
ChildOfChaos
I'm playing around with it, because I am looking for things I can do with AI to perhaps earn a second income, switch from being a basic employee to working for myself, the tech is very good, but not quite there yet I don't think, it's extremely close though.

While ElevenLabs seems the best, it's a shame it lacks the ability to edit the clips a little more like some of the other tools have, for speeding up certain words, making them louder or adding in some emotion. The other tools do this far better, however they sound robotic, i'm exploring if this could be achieved with some manual editing.