We have all used voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant before. Today, we have a new voice assistant, 11ai. This voice assistant is created by ElevenLabs, who are known for their audio-related models. This one is indeed special as it brings conversational AI, with Integrations that can help you browse the web, modify your calendar, and more. Without any further ado, let’s take a look at the platform, the voice support, and the integrations it offers in action.
Table of contents
What is ElevenLabs?
ElevenLabs is a popular company that creates TTS (Text-to-Speech) models, Speech-to-Text models, and many more models related to voice. The TTS models have various voices and support the creation of custom voices too (both from scratch and the recreation of an existing voice using audio samples).
11ai is the latest voice assistant by ElevenLabs; it’s an AI agent powered by a TTS model and with custom voice support as well. It offers multiple integrations and custom MCP support, too. These integrations let the agent connect to services and perform tasks. The current integrations include (more will be added soon):
- Linear: Issue tracking and project management
- Slack: For Team communication
- Notion: Task management
- Perplexity: To fetch real-time data
Getting Started
Let’s walk through the platform and get started exploring the personal assistant. First, open https://11.ai/ and complete the sign-up process.
Immediately after this, you would need to pick a name and voice for the assistant. I’m going with Jarnathan for now; feel free to pick any voice.
Now we can click on Start a Call and begin using the assistant.
Demonstration of Eleven
Let’s test 11ai and see how the AI agents are performing. We can either speak to it or chat with it, and it also supports multiple languages. You can change the language and customize it after clicking on the settings icon on the top right. Let’s click on Start a call and see for ourselves what it’s capable of.
Note: The agent can remember past conversations!
It’s a responsive assistant, and also, I would like to add, you can break its speech by talking in between, and then it tries to integrate the suggestions for the answer, just like how you would stop an LLM when you know that response isn’t exactly what you wanted. We also see that it’s unable to answer questions requiring real-time data. We’ll look at how to tackle this and see its other capabilities in the next section.
Integrations
11ai supports multiple integrations like Slack, Perplexity, and Google Calendar. They also claim that more will be added soon. Also, you can connect the agent with custom MCP servers if needed. Let’s connect it with Perplexity and see how it performs. Click on the settings icon on the top-right on then click Add Integration. You can choose multiple integrations at once or choose to give different integrations to different agents.
You can click on the icon at the top if you want to add, create, or modify agents or manage integrations.
Now, click on Start a call, and click on Allow if the agent requests approval for the use of Perplexity.
As you can see, the agent was able to pick up real-time information with the help of perplexity. I didn’t feel it was seamless, but it’ll surely get better with time.
Note: You can alter the settings to not ask for permission every time to use the integration.
Usecases of 11ai
Here are some of the use cases I can think of for this voice agent:
- Team communication: With the integration of Slack with 11ai, the agent will be able to help with summarizing the messages and notifications.
- Calendar access and scheduling: Asking the voice assistant (by voice or text) to check for the upcoming meetings, reschedule a meeting, or create a meeting.
- Custom workflows: By integrating custom MCP, you can use it to trigger an action by sending a request or connecting to other tools.
Conclusion
ElevenLabs’ 11ai voice assistant combines conversational AI with various integrations, making it versatile. The platform’s ability to connect with services like Perplexity enables access to real-time information, while integrations with Google Calendar and Slack allow users to manage schedules or communicate seamlessly. For example, you can ask the assistant to check your calendar for upcoming meetings or send messages through Slack, streamlining daily tasks. As more integrations are added, 11ai will eventually become an even more powerful tool for productivity and information retrieval.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What does MCP mean here?
A. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It’s a way for 11ai to talk to other services and apps safely and smoothly, so it can help you with more complex tasks.
Q2. Can I ask 11ai to check my calendar or help with tasks?
A. MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It’s a way for 11ai to talk to other services and apps safely and smoothly, so it can help you with more complex tasks.
Q3. What are the other available voice assistants?
A. There are other voice assistants out there, like Siri, Alexa, and Gemini.
Passionate about technology and innovation, a graduate of Vellore Institute of Technology. Currently working as a Data Science Trainee, focusing on Data Science. Deeply interested in Deep Learning and Generative AI, eager to explore cutting-edge techniques to solve complex problems and create impactful solutions.
