We heard about ElevenLabs’ AI voice assistant from one of our board members, Chris Mairs, so we thought we’d invite him to write the introduction for this post, which goes on to explain how you can build your own using Raspberry Pi.

Chris: I’m one of the board members at Raspberry Pi, and I first got introduced to ElevenLabs when I started a free weekly blog this summer: The Open Eyed Man.

The blog explores life as a blind man in a visual world, with an optimistic view on how AI — and, in particular, conversational voice agents — could be transformative. ElevenLabs kindly invited me to create a clone of my own voice in their recording studio, and there is now a personalised audio narration using that scarily realistic clone at the top of each The Open Eyed Man post. I’d love people to take a look or a listen, and to subscribe and share; the content is often lighthearted, but hopefully insightful and accessible to non-technical readers.

And don’t worry — the conversational assistant that Thor from ElevenLabs shows you how to build below absolutely does not use the clone of my voice. There are far more mellifluous and cheery options.

...read more at raspberrypi.com