Some Future Day

Marc Beckman: Dustin Blank from ElevenLabs. I am so thrilled to have you as a guest on some future day. How are you
Dustin Blank: Great, Marc Beckman. I'm so excited to be here.
Marc Beckman: Dustin, so one of the first experiences for me in artificial intelligence was actually ElevenLabs. I found it, um, as a result of. Being an owner of an advertising agency, exceptionally [00:11:00] useful as a tool in the advertising space. I'm curious if you could take a minute though, back up and tell the audience what ElevenLabs is and how it came into existence.
Dustin Blank: Absolutely. So ElevenLabs has been around for about two and a half years, and it was started by two best friends. They grew up together in Poland, went to high school together, and, um, they stayed in touch after high school and ended up going and working at Google and Palantir, and they really were committed to this idea of breaking down content barriers and.
The reason for that was a lot of their experience growing up and being best friends in high school was based around media and entertainment. And the funny thing about Poland is that when you watch movies imported from the U. S., there's actually only one voiceover narrator dubbing all of the characters.
So that's one male, usually in his 60s voice, [00:12:00] doing the kid, the wife, the villain, everyone. It was just a terrible, terrible viewing experience. And so, you know, later, 10 years later, they were, you know, watching a dubbed movie. Back in back in London together and they were like, there's got to be a better way around this.
And so that's really the genesis of the company. How can they break down content barriers and make language universal?
Marc Beckman: So essentially what you're telling me is that English speaking films, like the most iconic in history from Godfather and Scarface to Jaws and all of the Disney suite, um, is dubbed in Poland with one voice, typically male, and that individual plays every single character in the film.
Dustin Blank: Yes.
Marc Beckman: So the founders of ElevenLabs are loving film and entertainment, and they're like, this is bizarre.
We need to solve this problem.
Dustin Blank: Yes, exactly.
Marc Beckman: So two friends with a tech [00:13:00] background come together and they stand up this vertical.
Dustin Blank: Exactly. And so the beginning really was around this idea of, um, multilingual audio, but, um, you know, it quickly expanded. So as of now, today, we do voice replicas. So being able to, um, Replicate or clone a voice with proper input so that you can use it for text to speech. Uh, also today we do speech to speech.
So think of speech to speech as a voice changer. Um, I can talk into ElevenLabs's platform and put a voice over my voice so it sounds different. And then in addition to that, um, we We also are doing, audio books, uh, we're working in with movie studios. Uh, we, we really are doing the whole gambit of things right now.
Marc Beckman: So Dustin, we're going to get all into all of that in detail in a second. I just want the, uh, viewers to understand you use two very specific [00:14:00] AI voice generation terms of art. You said text to speech and speech to speech. So can you break it down? Like first explain how does text to speech work?
Dustin Blank: Sure. So text to speech at its most basic level is you're typing in your keyboard and then you want the output to be spoken in a human sounding voice. So that's, that's it. You put an English phrase or really any phrase in any language and you want it to be spoken in audio form.
Marc Beckman: And then for speech to speech.
Dustin Blank: Speech to speech is voice changing, so the idea there is I can speak into, uh, ElevenLabs, and I can put another voice over it so that I sound different like that other voice. So, for example, I could say, Hello, how are you? into ElevenLabs, and then if I had a voice replica of someone, a British woman, or, for example, you, Marc, I could make it sound like, uh, you were saying that with the same [00:15:00] intonation.
Marc Beckman: That's incredible. So why would anybody or any company want to use that service? What, what is so special about that? Why do I need that?
Dustin Blank: So We have two different types of customers and they come to us for really a variety of reasons. So on one hand, we have creators, um, think of the creator economy, YouTubers, TikTokers, um, uh, anyone who is creating their own content and distributing it to their own audience. And then on the other side of the spectrum, we have enterprise customers.
So our current stat, um, is that we work with over 50 percent of S& P 500 companies in one way or another. And they're using these technologies in a variety of ways. One could be anywhere from adding voiceover to videos for that creators do, um, opposed to going to the studio. They want to, um, just be able to really easily create a voiceover for their content.
Another one could be [00:16:00] advertisements or, um, brand deals. So creating that type of content with their voice replica.
Marc Beckman: I see
Dustin Blank: And then, um, on the other side of the spectrum, we have, uh, things like call centers. So we have conversational AI, where, uh, opposed to talking to a human agent, you can get really easy questions answered by, um, AI agents.
Marc Beckman: those AI agents and call centers sometimes frustrate me. I gotta be honest with you. Do you think that we'll be at a point imminently where the AI agents and call centers will create a more palatable experience for guys like me?
Dustin Blank: I think it's still early days and I'm not sure, I'm not sure if it's going to completely replace, in fact I don't think it will completely replace, I think it will enhance and create a better customer experience for someone like you, but ultimately there will be a human in the mix or a human in the loop somehow enhancing the process with an assist from an AI agent.
[00:17:00]
Marc Beckman: So ElevenLabs is like, it's, it's remarkable to me. I didn't realize it's, it's only been around, you said for two and a half years. I mean, the business is super impressive. You just mentioned that, um, some of the biggest S and P companies are already using the technology. And I know that. The company has been extremely successful at fundraising.
Can you talk a little bit about which corporations are already adopting the technology and, uh, the recent, uh, capital raise for the company?
Dustin Blank: So there's a lot of different companies and a lot of different types of industries that use us right now. I mean, on, um, on one end we have, uh, you know, big media companies using us like, like Disney for some of their, um, pre and post production, um, experimenting with us in a lot of ways. We were also in their accelerator program and they are investors in us.
And, on the other end of the, uh, Of the spectrum, we have [00:18:00] Harper Collins, for example, using us to create audio books of their backlist titles, right? So titles that normally wouldn't get the audio book treatment, bringing those books to life with, um, audio, uh, that wasn't really possible before because of the expense.
And so, um, those are just kind of two examples of, of media companies that are using us, um, right now, but we also, you know, are working with. A variety of other industries, from medical to food industry, um, think drive throughs, uh, to, um, to, uh, to telecom companies. It's, it's really growing and the use cases are, are expanding every day, so to speak.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, super impressive. And like I mentioned, the fundraising piece of it has just been, you know, very, very high profile, very, very successful. How much money does ElevenLabs have in its coffers from fundraising to date?
Dustin Blank: Well, um
Marc Beckman: I know it's been public, so
Dustin Blank: [00:19:00] Yeah, I, you know, I, we did just raise a big series C round at, um, a 3 billion plus valuation. And we're using all that money that, that we raised from this round really to put it towards our research and our models. So one of the interesting things around ElevenLabs is the fact that, um, we build our own models.
Uh, we have this great research team, um, and a lot of them who are creating these really. Um, best in class audio models to be used by our consumers. And that's kind of really what makes us stand apart. Some of the other things that we're going to be using the money for, of course, are our compute and growing teams like the partnerships team, sales teams, et cetera.
Marc Beckman: So 3 billion, uh, valuation coupled with investors like Disney, you really are world class. ElevenLabs truly is best in class, but there is competition, Dustin, right? Other companies are out there doing text to speech, speech to speech, synthetic AI [00:20:00] generated voices. What is it about ElevenLabs that beats the competition?
Why are you better than the competition?
Dustin Blank: You know, I think from the beginning, what has really made ElevenLabs stand out? at least from my perspective, is the fact that we do build our own research models and we have always really been committed to quality first. Uh, quality in terms of the sound of the human voices being the most, um, realistic, being the most, um, human sounding.
We've always been committed to doing that and not releasing new products unless they are meeting that very, very high standard and that high bar.
Marc Beckman: I see. I see. So let's talk about some of the business sectors that you touched on briefly. You mentioned publishing. How do you see the creation of AI generated speech radically altering the publishing industry?
Dustin Blank: I think that there's a couple ways [00:21:00] with which I see it, um, altering the industry. The first one is The democratization of books, a lot of people around the world right now, not everyone can read, uh, not everyone is literate, so being able to turn books, um, that normally wouldn't be able to be enjoyed by everyone into audio experiences is huge.
So that's one, um, and to be able to do it cheaply, um, with, uh, AI and synthetic voices would be great. Another area which I think is going to be so exciting is, um, the ability to. Make audio books come alive in ways that were not possible before. Imagine reading or listening to the opening of a book and hearing it in different character voices.
So there's the narrator voice, then you hear a different voice for the female protagonist, and then a different voice for the kid, but then all of a sudden, you know, there's a line about birds chirping, and then [00:22:00] birds chirping kind of comes in.
Marc Beckman: sound effects.
Dustin Blank: Yeah, and it really can create this, this incredible audio experience that just wasn't possible before AI.
And I think that's going to be very exciting.
Judy Garland: My name is Judy Garland, happy to be here and be a guest on the show. What do you want to talk about today?
Marc Beckman: Judy, I just want to know what it was like literally to meet the Wizard of Oz.
Judy Garland: Oh, honey, you know I can't tell you about meeting the Wizard of Oz! That's a secret I can't reveal, but I can tell you that filming the Wizard of Oz was a magical experience.
It was such hard work, but I was so happy to be a part of it. It was a dream come true.
Marc Beckman: how long did it take you to film the movie?
Judy Garland: Well, it took about two years to film the movie, but it felt like a lifetime. We filmed in color, which was very new at the time. And there were so many scenes with special effects.
It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. It was a magical experience. I'll never forget it.
Marc Beckman: Judy, how did you get your daughter, Liza [00:23:00] Minnelli to be such an incredible, incredible actor?
Judy Garland: Oh, honey, Liza's talent is all her own. She's a natural. I was so proud of her when she was in cabaret. She was so talented and she worked so hard.
I think she's a wonderful actress and I'm so grateful that she's my daughter.
Marc Beckman: Judy, what do you think the biggest pitfall in your career was?
Judy Garland: Well, honey, I think the biggest pitfall in my career was probably my struggles with addiction. It was something that I fought for a long time and it really affected my work, but I'm grateful that I was able to get help.
And I'm so proud of the work that I was able to do after that. I think that's what makes me the most proud of my career. My ability to overcome those challenges.
Marc Beckman: Like what? What other work did you do after Wizard of Oz?
Judy Garland: Oh, Honey, after The Wizard of Oz, I did so many things! I starred in a lot of musicals like Meet Me in St. Louis, Easter Parade, and Annie Get Your Gun. I also did some dramatic films like A [00:24:00] Star is Born and Judgment at Nuremberg. I was always trying to challenge myself and do different things. I was so lucky to have had such a wonderful career.
Marc Beckman: Judy, you're the hottest. Thanks for talking to me today.
Judy Garland: Oh, honey, thank you so much.
It's been a pleasure talking to you, too. It's been a long time since I've been on a podcast. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm always happy to talk about my career and my life. It's been a wild ride! Take care.
Marc Beckman: Dustin, I read at one point that you guys collaborated with, or developed a strategic alliance with PICA, um, the text to, uh, video AI, and I think it's really interesting because it All this talk with regards to Disney and knowing the background with Pika makes me start to think how far off are we from Feature films being launched in the United States that have you know full on Entirely 100 percent synthetic voices.
Is that something that could happen now?
Dustin Blank: I think that [00:25:00] it can happen now. Whether people want it to happen now is another story. Um, right now people are creating amazing YouTube videos all the time and TikTok videos with synthetic characters, with animated characters. But when you're talking about An industry, um, which, which I think like big worldwide releases, uh, I think we're, we're at a point where we're starting to experiment with using it, but I don't think we're ready for an entire movie quite yet,
Marc Beckman: with all those strikes, by the way, I thought for sure that you guys could step in and take a lot of that. I personally, I think Dustin that the use of synthetic speech of AI generated speech in feature films and docuseries across the board is going to become ubiquitous imminently. I think it's an issue of, I know there are other issues regarding compute, right?
Storage, et cetera. I know that's something that your company is focused on [00:26:00] as well, but I strongly believe that, uh, synthetic voices are going to be ubiquitous in, in the near future. I also believe that AI generated video is going to take over Hollywood in a massive way. Very, very soon.
Dustin Blank: I think the hope is, I think what we really hope as. labs is that like we're used as a storytelling tool, um, that partners with the industry partners with actor, actors, voiceover artists, um, authors, writers, animators to help enhance the product. So I think if you like look at our interface, everything about it is built intuitively to.
help that process and, um, enhance those workflows. So we're all for partnering with them to help create more content, better storytelling, however we can. And [00:27:00] I think, um, I think the technology is there to do that, I think. Some of the rules and, and, um, regulations around this space, um, still need to be figured out for, um, certain of the legacy media companies to feel, um, fully comfortable putting out a huge, um, new movie release.
But I think hopefully we'll get there and, you know, we're here to partner with them along the way.
Marc Beckman: Well, you know, part of the reason I am bullish about synthetic. in films is because if you look at the past, you know, three or four years, literally at the top 10 highest grossing films, most of them are remakes, right? They're coming out. So at some point,
Dustin Blank: It's true.
Marc Beckman: the celebrity doesn't need to go in the studio. If it's an animated film and it's like the number one film in the country, and it's like the second, third, or fourth version of the original, um, that.
That celebrity [00:28:00] really won't need to spend the time they could sit on their, you know, on their couch and enjoy their day or be with their family or create, you know, income in a different way. I really think that we are there now. Don't you agree?
Dustin Blank: I I think that we're more, what I would like to see happen before that point is taking storytelling, taking movies, taking completed projects, and allowing AI to get it to more places around the world through our dubbing, through being able to take audio, um And put it through ElevenLabs and, um, have the audio come out in the same intonation, the same emotionality, the same tone, but in a different language, in a different country.
Like that's, to me, is the best next step, taking a movie that just came out and, you know, putting it in, into French but having the same actors and actresses voice it, but in a different language. [00:29:00] To me, that's a really exciting prospect because one, it allows the actors and actresses who voice those original characters to travel around the world and have their performance experienced in a different language.
Two, it allows the directors, um, everyone for their vision to come to life exactly how, um, they envisioned it when they made the film in the first place. And to me, like that's, Uh, scenario that is extremely artist friendly, it's us partnering together, and it's us, um, getting and breaking down content barriers, like the original mission of the company was.
Marc Beckman: Dustin, what do you think if you focus on the artificial, excuse me, if you focus on the advertising industry, what do you think is the number one biggest gain that the advertising industry can have through the use of synthetic voice? Now, currently like immediately,
Dustin Blank: I would like to one hundred percent see more of, AI dubbing, similar to what I was just talking about. So taking advertisements [00:30:00] and, um, taking those existing advertisements and putting them into other languages around the world. So that will save so much, so much cost around creative teams around the world.
It will allow the original message to stay consistent, which is so hard to do for global products. I think that's something that they should be doing now. Another thing that, um, I think could be really useful, especially in the artists and celebrity space is promos. Think about when a musician is, uh, doing a tour and they have to do all those promo reads, um, to promote, to promote a tour with all of those radio stations, um, with, with all of those different individualized, um, specific, uh, local market, um, uh, reads.
What if you could use AI to help, um, to help make that process easier. So one, the actual end listener feels that they are being spoken to in their local wise market. And on the [00:31:00] other end, it allows the artist or the celebrity to connect more closely to that, um, and, and listener in ways that that wasn't possible before AI.
Marc Beckman: Dustin, could it go further? I know that you and I have been talking about leveraging the technology together for some of my clients in the advertising space to use in spaces, for example, on X. So. Can a high profile celebrity individual who's launching a new product go into those formats, local radio stations, uh, X, uh, spaces and beyond.
Can you stand up an AI agent and have the AI agent interacting with all of the local media? Is it possible to train an AI agent specifically on whatever it is that that individual, that celebrity is promoting at that time period?
Dustin Blank: It is. So we have something called conversational agents and what it allows you to do is to leverage the AI replica that you have created on ElevenLabs. [00:32:00] So that's the voice, the sound, and then you can use different LLMs in the market to train that, um, that or prompt that voice so that it is a It is an agent in a certain way answering questions in a certain way based on, um, the prompts in place.
So for example, for you, Marc, if you wanted to create, you know, a Marc Beckman, um, some future day AI agent, we could train that, um, we can use your voice that we created and replicated and then train that agent on everything in your book. And then you could put that on Twitter, um, or sorry, put that on X or put that, uh, wherever you want your fans to engage and they can interact and ask questions about that book.
Um, anything. anything in that book, and they can hear the response in audio from you directly. Of course, one of the things that is really important about when you're putting your voice out there is putting the proper guardrails in [00:33:00] place. We can prompt it so it says things like no politics or, uh, stay away from anything that could be controversial.
Um, of course, when you put those guardrails on, you get, um, you get a mixed, um, response. So you have to really tweak the agent until you feel like it accomplishes what you want.
Marc Beckman: So Dustin, will everyone on the planet have their own AI agent at some point?
Dustin Blank: Um, yes.
Marc Beckman: I love it. And will that AI agent then be trained to go out and, you know, do monotonous tasks that we all hate, buy a new pair of shoes, finish my homework, kick out these 20 emails, and also appear on this local radio station promoting my new book.
Dustin Blank: Um, I think, I think, why not? I think it can do that. I think it totally can.
Marc Beckman: I agree. I agree. [00:34:00] Dustin, something that I really appreciate with you as an individual personally, I know you're a caring, thoughtful person and you've highlighted some of the pro social uses of synthetic voices, of, of AI generated speech and ElevenLabs is actually very, very big in that. For example, I know that, um, one area that you've concentrated on so far is for, uh, patients, uh, who suffer from ALS.
For example, can you talk a little bit about ElevenLabs commitment to pro social initiatives and how you're helping individuals who might have some sort of impediment to their, their own speech?
Dustin Blank: Sure. I mean, this, this is one of the most exciting things about working at ElevenLabs that we discovered ElevenLabs being an amazing use case for this entire, uh, accessibility industry that wasn't meant to be. Um, it just kind of happened naturally. We found out, [00:35:00] uh, pretty early on in this I think it's really important to, to highlight in this, this company's journey that people who had, um, different degenerative diseases that affected their voice, such as ALS or mouth cancer, or MSA, where they would either lose their ability to speak 100%, or, um, lose their ability to, um, you know, talk as they normally did, um, were really benefiting from using ElevenLabs.
It, the way it works is really that, um, some of these folks with these degenerative diseases would create voice replicas using past recordings of audio, whether it's 30 seconds, if they have that, or 30 minutes, if they're lucky to have that, to create a voice replica that sounds like them. And then, um, they're able to use assistive devices like eye trackers or.
If they're able to still type, um, on their ElevenLabs, um, phone or through the website to, to [00:36:00] speak, um, and communicate in their original voice. And so our commitment here is to give anyone who has those diseases, um, lifetime free subscription. to ElevenLabs so that they can continue to speak to their families, their caregivers, their communities, and hopefully they'll be less isolated because of that.
Marc Beckman: That's super empowering and really important, really impressive. Kudos to you and the ElevenLabs team. That's incredible, Dustin.
Dustin Blank: It's a, it's a great mission and it's something that the entire team at ElevenLabs is behind.
Deepak Chopra: My name is Deepak Chopra. Happy to be here and be a guest on the show.
Marc Beckman: Deepak, welcome to my show some future day. How are you?
Deepak Chopra: Thank you, Marc. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm doing well. Thank you for asking. I'm always happy to explore the possibilities of the future, and I'm excited to see what we can discuss today.
Marc Beckman: Deepak, I have to ask you, I am totally stressed out. I've been [00:37:00] living on espresso for days. I haven't slept in at least a week. What do you suggest I do to rebalance?
Deepak Chopra: Marc, I hear you. It sounds like you're in a state of imbalance, and that's not conducive to living a fulfilling life. The first step is to acknowledge that you're not alone.
Many people struggle with stress and sleeplessness. The key is to find ways to bring your mind and body back into harmony. You mentioned you've been living on espresso. That's a sign that you're relying on external stimulants to keep you going. Instead, I encourage you to turn inward and explore the power of your own inner resources.
Start by taking a few deep breaths. Focus on your breath and allow it to calm your mind and body. You can also try practicing meditation or yoga. These practices can help to quiet the mind and promote relaxation. And [00:38:00] most importantly, Marc, make sure you're getting enough sleep. Sleep is essential for our physical and mental wellbeing.
Aim for seven to eight hours of sleep each night.
Marc Beckman: Seven to eight hours. That's crazy.
Deepak Chopra: I understand, Marc. It can seem like a lot, especially when you're feeling overwhelmed, but trust me, your body needs that time to rest and recharge.
Marc Beckman: Oh, I totally trust you.
Deepak Chopra: That's great to hear, Marc. Remember, you are not alone in this.
Marc Beckman: Thank you.
Deepak Chopra: You're welcome, Marc.
Marc Beckman: Deepak, it's been great having you on Some Future Day today. I end every single show with each guest the same way. I create a leading question and the guest finishes the question. Are you game for playing?
Deepak Chopra: Of course, Marc.
Marc Beckman: Okay, Deepak. In some future day, the world will become more balanced by...
Deepak Chopra: by embracing the interconnectedness of all things.
Marc Beckman: Deepak, I love you.
Deepak Chopra: [00:39:00] Thank you, Marc. It's been a pleasure being on your show. I hope our conversation has provided some valuable insights for your listeners. Remember, the future is what we make it. Let's create a future filled with peace, harmony, and well-being.
Marc Beckman: So Dustin, let's talk a little bit about the dark side of AI generated voices. Um, I know for example, that you are, your organization has been super ethical. I've interacted full disclosure. Like I've been interacting with ElevenLabs for a couple of different clients on different projects. I have a lot of trust and faith with regards to.
Not just the guardrails that you're saying that you'd set up as it relates to training and artificial intelligence. But I believe your organization is also, um, under, you have a good, uh, barometer with regards to ethics and therefore you're instituting certain safeguards surrounding ethical concerns.
Can you talk a little bit about some of the ethical concerns that just generally speaking, come into [00:40:00] play with AI generated voice and then what ElevenLabs is doing to make sure that, um, those, those issues are not misused.
Dustin Blank: Sure. I think that One of the things that, um, is important to ElevenLabs is that we operate ethically and that we put the right guardrails in place, uh, to make that happen. Um, so, for example, um, one of the things that was important to us, um, around, for example, The election, um, the most recent election was making sure that there wasn't, like, disinformation out there and things like that.
So the safety team at ElevenLabs created a political classifier, um, to, uh, block the, um, generation of certain audio that had text to speech phrases that could be, misconstrued or construed as political. Um, uh, another thing that we've, we do is, um, we have, um, content [00:41:00] moderation. So we point to different LLMs when people are generating speech, um, to make sure that they're not violating our terms of services, uh, so if they are.
Then that person will be warned and then later banned. Another thing that is important to us is that we have a tool that anyone can go to at ElevenLabs to To identify if content or audio was created with, uh, ElevenLabs. So this, the idea behind that is to help people identify if audio is synthetic from ElevenLabs or not.
Um, and that's, that's available. And so those are just some of the things that we're doing to help the space and lean in the space.
Marc Beckman: So what happens then legally, let's say, for example, I team up with you, you create a synthetic version of my voice and then third party actors, let's say nefarious, bad actors, go ahead and build on top of my voice [00:42:00] situations that might be committing fraud or preying on the elderly or whatever it might be like, what kind of, how do you, how do you interact then with, with that type of a scenario?
Dustin Blank: So, I guess, I don't, that scenario wouldn't necessarily I don't know how that scenario would happen, right? Because if you're creating a voice replica, it really should live in your account, um, and be, and, and be kept safely under, under your watch or only shared with people that you trust. so to answer that question, it's not like when we're creating a voice replica of you, Marc, we're putting it on our public library where anyone can access and create advertisements with, right?
Marc Beckman: Let's go on to the premise that, um, an individual cannot copyright their own voice. I believe that that's the law. We could double check on it. We'll double check on it. But here's the question to you.
Dustin Blank: He'll double that comment. Okay.
Marc Beckman: person, one of the most famous people in the world.
Um, we saw last night during the Superbowl halftime show, Kendrick [00:43:00] Lamar, he comes out and the entire world wants to now, because he's so buzzy is in the zeitgeist. Everybody wants to get his voice recorded. So a couple of people go and they record his voice and they create music with it. And they. Stream it off of, um, one of the big streamers like Spotify and they generate income off of it.
Is that fair play?
Dustin Blank: no,
Marc Beckman: That's it? Just a straight up. No, because we've seen it, right? We saw it with the weekend in Drake. What happened in that instance?
Dustin Blank: I mean, with, with what you're describing, then it sounds like that person would then be, you know, claiming that, look, I'm not a lawyer here, but my initial gut reaction that is not legal to that is that that would not be okay. One, because that person did not ask for Kendrick Lamar's consent. Two, they're probably advertising it as a Kendrick Lamar new song.
That's his name, right? They can't do that. Um, so my initial gut is, no, that [00:44:00] is not okay. I think, though, it's an interesting question that you're getting at, which is, in this new world, when things become easier to, to monetize, um, and to replicate, where, how, how are people going to put guardrails around that?
And the answer is You know, I think you have to be ethical about it. and I think you, you have to be ethical about it. And as a technology company, you have to serve the right safeguards.
Marc Beckman: So we're living in a time period where people are just not ethical, Dustin. You know that. So let's go back to your comment earlier with regards to politics. It's kind of interesting. I'm sure we'll see the use of, uh, synthetic voices in politics where the opposing party might take, uh, the, the competition voice and have her or him say something that will be less than appealing to the masses and as a result could tank an election.
Uh, do you anticipate [00:45:00] that happening?
Dustin Blank: I think no one wants false information to be out there. And so, whether it's a social media company, um, who's in charge of distributing that, or, or the person, I think that there definitely needs to be, um, you know, conversations to be had about how to protect disinformation from being out there.
And, um, it's, it's definitely something that, It's definitely something that, you know, is in the news all the time, um, about the difference between free speech and, um, and, and other areas. So personally, my point, point of view is, um, it's something that we all have to do our part to help protect against.
Marc Beckman: I agree. We need to come together as a community, which might be tough to do. Think in terms of, again, those bad actors. I alluded to it. I alluded to it earlier. Um, people that are perhaps not totally in the know about this new technology, the older [00:46:00] generation, for example, the octogenarians, they receive a phone call with voice generated speech from their granddaughter saying.
You know, grandma, grandpa, I need a million dollars wired to my, you know, to this fund immediately. I think it's predictable that we'll see this happening. I know it's happened a little bit and it's been reported a little bit, but I anticipate we'll see an increase in these types of crimes.
Dustin Blank: Yes. Um, I, I think that there's certain areas out there which are definitely scary right now, and we have to all be aware of that. Educating folks around it and creating new tools to prevent against it.
Marc Beckman: Did you hear about the fake, um, Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, his fake, uh, surrender message that came out in around 2022?
Dustin Blank: I did not.
Marc Beckman: Yeah. Apparently like Zelensky, somebody created a synthetic voice, uh, audio file of his voice and [00:47:00] released. A surrender to the Russians all the way back now in 2022, which is, is pretty wild, wild, uh, pretty, pretty wild.
I can't speak right now. Um, another area that I think is interesting, worth exploring is the idea of artificial intelligence and companionship, older people who, um, lose a loved one who feel lonely. Where does, uh, this, where does synthetic voice come into play there?
Dustin Blank: So when, you know, it's really interesting, this whole idea of companionship and AI, I think when ChatGPT first came out, people were, you know, talking to it in different ways, um, and trying to prompt it to say certain things, be comforting. And I truly think we've only just scratched the surface there because it has so many therapeutic and, uh, beneficial, um, possibilities, whether it's from life coaching, whether [00:48:00] it's from, um, accountability coaches to companionship to, um, um, Being a conversationalist.
I, I think that it's something that we've only scratched the surface of and the voice component adds a whole other layer to these LLMs that do that. So to me, it's
Marc Beckman: so futuristic.
Dustin Blank: yeah. I mean, I think even the idea of like talking to yourself is interesting, right? Um, your own voice being your AI agent. I think that's, that's pretty cool.
Marc Beckman: could the AI agent train it, can it train itself? Like, is there a way for the AI agent to become more intelligent? Like, can my AI agent
Dustin Blank: Yeah.
Marc Beckman: smarter than me? It will
Dustin Blank: that, that, I think that I do not know, but um, I think that's like the, the question, right? Are these, um, AI LLMs going to be smarter than humans in the first place?
Marc Beckman: Yeah. I think there's a concern also with regards to not just political deepfakes, but journalistic deepfakes. Right, Dustin? So I think in China, [00:49:00] they stood up both video and audio of, um, journalists, synthetic journalists reporting the news, um, and all of it was just propaganda. It was uncovered later that none of it was real.
Did you, did you hear about that?
Dustin Blank: I did not hear about that.
Marc Beckman: Yeah. Yeah. Pretty wild. Um, so it's interesting. So you guys are like way ahead of the curve. ElevenLabs is outpacing everybody, but yet you have these massive tech companies like Google and Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, they're all putting billions and billions of dollars into this space.
how does ElevenLabs create a moat for itself to compete against these giants?
Dustin Blank: I think just keep, keep building world class models. I think that's, that's our focus, right? Um, our focus is on the research, keep building world class models, keep creating great, intuitive customer experiences for both enterprises, but also creators. And that, that comes down to getting into workflows and, um, [00:50:00] making the experience to leverage and utilize AI audio as easy as possible.
Marc Beckman: Hi, Sir Lawrence Olivier. Welcome to Some Future Day. How are you?
Laurence Olivier: Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Beckman. I'm well, thank you. It is a pleasure to be here. What shall we discuss today?
Marc Beckman: I'm so curious about what you think the state of entertainment is today?
Laurence Olivier: The state of entertainment today? Ah, a fascinating question.
It is a landscape vastly different from the one I knew in my youth. The mediums have multiplied. The pace is relentless and the reach is global, but the essence remains the same: to move, to inspire, to provoke. What are your thoughts, Mr. Beckman?
Do you find this new age of entertainment fulfilling?
Marc Beckman: I think it's very fulfilling. However, I think artificial intelligence is going to radically change the entertainment industry. So my question to you is, how will you play a role in the future of entertainment?
Laurence Olivier: An intriguing prospect, I must confess. I find the [00:51:00] notion of artificial intelligence mimicking the human experience both fascinating and unsettling. To think that a machine could one day replicate the nuances of emotion, the complexities of human interaction, the very essence of what makes us human. It is a thought that both excites and frightens me.
As for my role in this future, I cannot say with certainty, but I believe that the true art of acting, the ability to connect with an audience on a visceral level, will always be a human endeavor. Perhaps in this new age, my legacy will live on in the form of data, algorithms, and digital avatars. But I believe that the human spirit, the raw passion that drives us to create, will endure.
What are your thoughts on this, Mr. Beckman?
Marc Beckman: I think it's interesting, but I got, can I ask you a personal question?
Laurence Olivier: Of course, Mr. Beckman, I'm always happy to share my thoughts and experiences.
Marc Beckman: Were you married?
Laurence Olivier: Yes, Mr. Beckman, I was. Twice, in fact. My [00:52:00] first marriage was to the actress Jill Esmond, a woman of great beauty and talent. We had a son, Tarquin, and our union lasted for many years. My second marriage was to Vivien Leigh, a truly remarkable actress, a force of nature. Our relationship was Intense, to say the least, but it was also a source of great passion and creativity.
Do you have any other questions about my personal life?
Marc Beckman: No, I know you're very busy wherever you are, so I want to thank you for joining my show, Some Future Day.
Laurence Olivier: Thank you, Mr. Beckman. It has been a pleasure. I wish you all the best in your endeavors. And remember, the future is a canvas upon which we all have the power to paint.
Marc Beckman: Dustin, one of the coolest things that you guys are doing is working with the estates of dead artists, dead individuals, and figuring out new ways to monetize. I know you've built out Judy Garland, Jerry Garcia, Deepak Chopra, Sir Lawrence Olivier, amongst [00:53:00] others, you can maybe share some of the bigger names, but how are, how are you guys monetizing?
Let's start with the dead, the deceased people. Um, how are you monetizing their voices?
Dustin Blank: So those, so those voices that you just mentioned are part of our Iconic Voices collection, and the idea there is we have this great reading app, right, that's completely free to all users as of now, um, and basically a user can come in and hear text to speech, um, whether it's books or notes from class, um, what have you, in, in the voices of their favorite ElevenLabs, um, Audio,
Marc Beckman: Very cool.
Dustin Blank: audio, AI, uh, voices, or in the voices of these iconic names that you just mentioned, um, and hopefully that you'll, you'll show some of them or, or to your audience.
And so, um, the idea there is that people want to hear stories. In the voices of their choosing, um, people want to hear, uh, notes in the voices of their [00:54:00] choosing. So we made partnerships with these estates, um, we're very excited about getting, um, the, their, um, their either family members or, or their loved ones, um, back in front of the people who love them and exposing them to new audiences in the first place.
Marc Beckman: It's really fascinating. So you stand up new business verticals effectively with some of the most iconic voices, right? Like Sir, Sir Lawrence Olivier, his family. I'm curious, like, how did they react when you first entered the conversation? Did they have to understand, like, did they, there's no way they understood what you were talking about at the outset.
So how do you like break it down to them? Like, how do they believe in it?
Dustin Blank: So, you know, luckily all of these estates, you know, have, um, have, I would say, great either managers or people who present them who can, who have their best interests at heart, who can explain it to them. But one of the areas which, of course, most of these folks were concerned about was, would be, um, will, um, a iconic voice [00:55:00] say something that would be extremely offensive to a larger population.
And, you know, we explained to them our moderation tools that we have in place to prevent something like that from happening. Another area that was of real concern was, okay, if they're reading, you know, Pride and Prejudice or another public domain book, will that person then be able to download it and sell it somewhere else?
And so, um, with our reading app, which these voices are on, they're only available to be listened to and streamed in real time, not. creating new audiobooks, um, with them and distributing it. That's a big difference between the iconic voices and all the other voices that we have available.
Marc Beckman: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, Jerry Garcia has such a passionate fan base. The Deadheads are not just ubiquitous but they are safeguarding his legacy, man. It is a big deal.
Dustin Blank: Their family was so, they probably were, Jerry's, um, wife and daughter were probably the, the two, [00:56:00] two, um, people who were most excited about doing this. compared to all of them. Um, I mean, although Liza Minnelli gave a great quote, um, for Judy Garland saying how excited she was to do this, which was, which was pretty cool for me.
But, um, Jerry's, Jerry's family was very excited about this. They're open to experimentation because at the end of the day, they reminded me that Jerry was Very tech forward during his lifetime, extremely,
Marc Beckman: that right?
Dustin Blank: yes. And so this is something they felt like he would be very interested in doing, experimenting with.
And, you know, we're allowing that voice, Jerry's voice, to, um, help with, uh, some of their, um, public exhibitions and, and different things of that nature. So, and I think the deals that we struck with them were, were very fair. They're, you know, short term, short term deals. They're not in perpetuity, um, and so.
I think, I think both sides were happy at them.
Marc Beckman: So with a community like the Grateful Dead fans, there must be some sensitivities, um, you know, [00:57:00] facing the, the community too, right? Like they all feel like they need, the fan base needs to protect Jerry. So what, what do they get worked up about? What do they get upset
Dustin Blank: I think that's a very fair question. They, they do get worked up. Some do, some, some are into it. they don't understand why the family would do that, right? They, they think it's, you know, a, uh, more of like they think it's a greedy move, I would
Marc Beckman: Oh, wow.
Dustin Blank: Uh, but it's, it's not, if they, if they think that, then they don't need to listen to it, right? They can vote with their headphones. They don't need to, to listen to it. And so,
Marc Beckman: Honestly, Dustin, it's such a value add. Like if I was walking through a Jerry Garcia immersive installation, including his artwork and I had him curating not just the artwork, but the voice, like having his voice, tell me and teach me what it is that I'm looking at, what inspired him. I mean, that seems like such a richer experience than just having a third party, uh, telling Jerry's story.
Dustin Blank: [00:58:00] 100%, and I do think one thing I want to highlight, and it's kind of like a thread that's been through this entire conversation, is by no means is ElevenLabs Ever trying to say that these voices are the real person. Um, not trying to trick anyone by saying that that's Jerry Garcia or, or that's Judy Garland.
Um, That's not the idea here. It's to tell stories in a different way, using synthetic voice, not pretend that it is that person. And so I do hope that gets communicated with the iconic voices, um, to some of the people, the Jerry fans who didn't like it at first, who, who were kind of worked up, some people loved it, but not
Marc Beckman: I see it, Dustin. I'm one of those people who love it, for sure. I think it's super valuable. Tell me, Dustin, who, like, living people, living celebrities, high profile people from government and whatnot, who, who's getting into the mix with ElevenLabs? Is there [00:59:00] anyone that you could
Dustin Blank: Chopra Yeah, Deepak Chopra, um, to those who aren't aware, a spiritual guru, um, has written, you know,
Marc Beckman: Huge.
Dustin Blank: hundreds of books, you know, almost a hundred books. Um, his teachings are worldwide. He is so into AI because he believes that it spreads its message.
It's additive. Um, it allows, um, people to not only learn from him in new ways, but also, um, allows them to interact and him to interact with them in new ways. It, he thinks it's an expansion of his consciousness. So he's very into it. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you have. Um, experts and thought leaders who are constantly using AI.
Um, they're not letting their voice be completely out there, but they're enhancing their content with AI. You've got people like, um, Arianna Huffington, um, who created the Huffington Post, one of, you know, the leaders in. In new age of journalists and journalistic community and [01:00:00] media community. You've got countless others who we can't, I can't say, um, not yet anyway, um, who are leaning into, leaning into all of this, um, because they realize that it's an additive experience for their users to get more content out there in more ways.
Marc Beckman: It's going to fundamentally change areas that we're not covering too. Like think about the gaming experience for people now. Like it's imminent where you'll see you're going through Roblox or Minecraft or any, you know, massive, uh, platform. And all of a sudden you're coming across these different personalities and they're speaking and they're engaging.
It's going to be pretty wild.
Dustin Blank: It will be wild. I think like the dream state is that the real dream state and in one way is like, I'm talking to you right now, Marc, but Marc, you only speak French, right? Uh, and so we're communicating, and I only speak English, but we're able to communicate back and forth in real time, [01:01:00] um, through AI technology.
So I can hear you in your voice in English, and you can hear me in my voice in French.
Marc Beckman: How far off are we?
Dustin Blank: probably sooner than you think, like I would say a year, two years.
Marc Beckman: Amazing. Really amazing. So Dustin, listen, you've given me a ton of your time today before we end. Is there anything that you want to cover that we haven't hit today?
Dustin Blank: I think one thing to, you know, of course, note, there are, there are controversies always in, in the AI space and with new technologies. I think that, um, with ElevenLabs, you have a company who's trying to figure it out. And, um. lead in the right way in this space and we're excited to bring more products to market.
Marc Beckman: Yeah. Like I said, Dustin, I think you guys have been tremendous. You and I are working behind the scenes outside of the show and you've done nothing except shown like super advanced technology as [01:02:00] well as ethical, um, an ethical approach to the business side, which I really appreciate. So here's how we end every episode.
Every guest before we finished Dustin, um, Essentially engages with me where I lead a question. I start with, um, the name of the show, some future day, and I allow for them to finish the sentence. Are you familiar with this type of format?
Dustin Blank: Yes.
Marc Beckman: Are you ready for it?
Dustin Blank: I am ready
Marc Beckman: All right, good. So in some future day, artificial intelligent agents will speak with other AI agents about.
Dustin Blank: perfecting the experience of The person who is prompting for them.
Marc Beckman: I love it. Dustin Blank. Thank you so much for joining me today. You're amazing. You're a good person. I love your technology. I wish you only the best of luck.
Dustin Blank: Thank you so much for having me. I love your podcast And I love being here
[01:03:00] [01:04:00]