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AI assistants are cropping up faster than we can keep track of them, promising to automate our mundane daily tasks and skyrocket productivity. AI audio company ElevenLabs wants to take those promises a step further: from words to actions.
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On Monday, the company launched 11ai, a voice assistant powered by the company's library of more than 5,000 voices. What sets this assistant apart, ElevenLabs claims, is its integration with Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), which is quickly becoming an industry standard for seamlessly connecting AI systems, especially agents, with proprietary data. MCP has even been adopted by Anthropic competitors, including Meta, Google, and OpenAI.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
"Traditional voice assistants face limitations when it comes to actually accomplishing something meaningful," the company said in the announcement. "They can answer questions but can't research new findings based on supplied data. 11ai is our foray into addressing this by connecting directly to the tools you use every day through MCP integration."
The integration means 11ai can connect to your Slack, Google Calendar, Perplexity, and more to automate commands with your voice. In the release, ElevenLabs noted that 11ai can help users plan their morning agenda, conduct customer research, manage projects, and more. If none of the company's voice options suit you, you can opt to clone your own voice instead.
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"The MCP architecture ensures that all connections are secure and that 11ai only has access to the specific actions you've authorized," the release states. "Each integration can be configured with appropriate permissions, giving you full control over what your AI assistant can and cannot do."
ElevenLabs is known for its impressive AI voice cloning and offers other products, including text-to-speech and sound effect generation. More broadly, voice is becoming a key mode for AI systems due to its accessibility -- Google is even incorporating it into basic Search.
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