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If you’ve ever started reading an article on your iPhone only to have to drive, walk, bike, do housework, or otherwise tear your eyes away from the screen, ElevenLabs has the app for you.
The AI ​​audio creation company founded by former Palantir engineers today launched its first iOS app, “ElevenLabs Reader: AI Audio.”
Unlike the full ElevenLabs website, which includes a number of different AI models and features, including text-to-speech, speech-to-other voices and languages, AI dubbing, and AI sound effects, the new ElevenLabs iOS app is more narrowly tailored and focused specifically. about converting text files or web links into audio narration that the user can listen to while on the go, or doing something else with their eyes and hands, like grilling, cooking dinner, putting away the dishes, etc.
Initially, this in-app text-to-speech feature will only be available in English, though a pop-up indicates that the full 29+ languages ​​that ElevenLabs supports on the web will also soon be coming to its iOS Reader app.
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The app is available as a free download through the Apple App Store and requires iOS 15 or later software versions.
It requires you to sign in with an existing ElevenLabs account or create a new one using your email and password, or sign in with a Google or Apple account.
Once you log in, you’ll be presented with a list of preloaded text files with accompanying audio narration, most of which look like fairy tales and folklore stories that are already publicly available, such as Cinderella, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and classic Victorian Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s mystery series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Tapping on any of these stories will download the text and instantly start the AI ​​voice narration with a green interactive highlighter that follows and highlights every word spoken by the AI ​​narrator.
Of course, most of us busy adults have other things we need to read besides fairy tales, so there’s also a plus button in the top right corner of the app’s main menu that the user can click to pull up an “Add your own content” menu, including writing your own text, importing a URL they copied and pasted from their mobile web browser, or a file from the iOS Files app.
The app also integrates with the default iOS Share Sheet, so a user can add a widget to their iOS Safari browser’s share sheet and share links from the browser view to ElevenLabs iOS Reader as they browse without having to copy. and insert
By tapping the default 1.0x speed indicator in the lower right corner of the app, the user can increase or decrease the speed between 0.8x and 2x. However, you can’t select these speeds from a drop-down or scroll-down menu – instead, you just tap and cycle through each one, one at a time, which might be a bit annoying for some users.
By tapping the sound wave icon in the left icon, the user can choose from 11 different voices and accents, from male to female to American to Austrian to British English.
Uploading a PDF file with visuals and graphics from my iOS Files app to ElevenLabs iOS Reader took me a few seconds during testing, and the app removed all the visuals and displayed only the text. There were also formatting issues that caused the narration to feel a little pricey – stopping at inopportune moments for line breaks.
I also encountered a few random error messages and text-to-audio failures during my brief testing.
However, the app is brand new and will undoubtedly improve rapidly. And the actual AI voice narration functionality was surprisingly smooth overall and incredibly accurate and convincing. It even worked on VentureBeat articles and a full 300+ page novel manuscript.
One big question is whether ElevenLabs captures all/any text data and files the user submits to the app, stores it somewhere (and if so, is it encrypted and private storage), and/or trains on the files the user uploads. or recording. We’ve reached out to the company for a response and will update when we hear back.