Rebecca Bellan, a senior reporter at TechCrunch, recently spoke at the Web Summit in Doha, where she discussed the significant advances in voice technology and its implications for artificial intelligence. Bellan, with her deep expertise in AI business, policy, and emerging trends, provided critical context. She dove into the many ways companies are changing and developing their voice models to significantly improve user engagement and interactions.
Bellan’s work has been published in outlets including Forbes, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, and The Daily Beast. Through her work, she has illuminated the ways technology and society intersect. She is interested in new AI developments and how they change our everyday lives.
At the Web Summit, though, Bellan was more interested in talking about ElevenLabs, a company she’s done some of her best reporting on so far. ElevenLabs is working with Meta to bring its voice tech to platforms from Instagram to Horizon Worlds. Horizon Worlds, Meta’s virtual reality platform, is supposed to allow people to walk into, say, a virtual art gallery or conference room—places where voice interaction would be essential.
“Let’s stop staring at our phones and put them back in our pockets! Then we can start exploring the world around us and use our voices to take back control from technology,” said Mati Staniszewski, describing his vision for how we’ll experience technology in the future.
The advent of ElevenLabs’ highly realistic voice models show just how far we’ve come. These models have evolved beyond simple human speech replication to feature emotional nuances and singer intonation. This evolution creates a more intuitive and human experience between users and technology, making interactions more efficient and engaging.
Combine this with the reasoning capabilities of large-language models like ChatGPT and you have an incredibly powerful, multipurpose tool. Together, this combination unlocks exciting new possibilities for how users can interact with technology across multiple environments. Companies like Google are increasingly coming under fire for how they arbitrate their voice-based systems and data privacy. Bellan points to the promise of these advancements to radicalize the future of voice technology.
New pushes, particularly in generative AI, are influencing how voice models are being deployed. There is an increasing user expectation for even easier to use products. Bellan’s coverage of these emerging trends sheds light on the potential challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in voice technology.
If you’d like to share any comments or questions with Rebecca Bellan, you can email her at rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com. Or better yet, drop her a line on Signal at rebeccabellan.491.