ElevenLabs Impact Helps People Reclaim Their Voices (Full Transcript)

[00:00:18] Speaker 1: Please welcome Gabi Leibovitz, who leads Impact at Eleven Labs.

[00:00:38] Speaker 2: Good afternoon. I'm Gabi Leibovitz. I am a certified speech-language therapist, and I lead our Impact program on the partnerships team. In 2024, our partnerships team identified a growing need among individuals with motor neuron disease, also known as ALS, and uncovered a use case for our technology that we never could have imagined. For those of you who may not be familiar, ALS is a neurodegenerative condition that progressively affects the nerves controlling muscle movement. Over time, many individuals with ALS lose the ability to walk, to move their hands, to eat, and to speak. Throughout all of this, their minds often remain fully intact. They still think, feel, and create as they always have, but their bodies no longer allow them to express it. Many of these individuals communicate by typing messages one letter at a time using eye-tracking devices, and when they finish typing out that message, the voice that speaks the words is often generic, robotic, and a text-to-speech voice. This allows these individuals to get their basic needs met, but not to be truly heard, until they discovered Eleven Labs. When individuals came to us having found our voice-cloning technology, they told us something that we will never forget. They felt like they had been given a piece of their identity back. Not only were they communicating more, they were staying in their jobs longer. They were writing and producing audio books, performing stand-up comedy, renewing their vows, and reading stories to their grandchildren. A non-profit supporting individuals with ALS came to Eleven Labs with an ask. They wondered if we would consider giving away 30,000 free voices to support all of the individuals in the United States living with ALS. And Eleven Labs said, we want to give back one million voices. Today, through the Eleven Labs Impact Program, any individual with permanent voice loss, not just from ALS, but from any condition, including head and neck cancer, stroke, multiple sclerosis, and the clinicians supporting them, get free access to Eleven Labs technology for life. We also provide free, hands-on audio editing for those individuals to ensure that the voice they use to communicate with every day truly represents who they are on the inside. We also provide free access to our technology for non-profit organizations. And to date, we have supported over 450 non-profits across healthcare, education, and culture, and empowered over 7,000 free voices. And this is just the beginning. Today, I want to highlight the individuals at the heart of this work, starting by showing you a short trailer for a documentary we created called Eleven Labs, Eleven Voices, which is premiering at South by Southwest this March, narrated by Sir Michael Caine.

[00:03:49] Speaker 3: Around the world, millions face medical conditions that take away their ability to speak. Loved ones are left missing the familiar sound of their voice. Eleven Labs is on a mission to help them reclaim it. Through our technology, we give people back the sound of themselves. In Eleven films, here's some of those extraordinary people telling their stories in their own voice. Eleven stories, Eleven Voices, Eleven Labs.

[00:04:27] Speaker 2: Thank you. And now, I'd like to invite our very special guest, Patrick Darling, to the stage. Hi, Patrick. If you wouldn't mind, would you please introduce yourself to the audience?

[00:04:58] Speaker 4: My name is Patrick Darling, and it is great to be here with you all. I was born and raised in the East Midlands of England before finding home in the city of Bristol in 2011. I've been a voice actor, a barista, a barber, a boatman, a gamer, a painter, and a YouTube content creator. But above all things, I have been a musician. At the age of 29, I developed the life-devastating illness of motor neuron disease, also called ALS. Now, four years later, I have lost the ability to sing and play my instruments, but I still continue to compose and produce my music.

[00:05:44] Speaker 2: Before you found Eleven Labs, how were you communicating? Had you tried traditional tools like voice banking, and what were those experiences like for you?

[00:05:52] Speaker 4: When my voice was starting to fail, I began seeing a speech therapist who mentioned voice banking, where you record your voice to save it for when you can't use your own anymore. I struggled with that because by that stage, my voice had already changed. It felt like we were saving the wrong voice.

[00:06:20] Speaker 2: I want to take you back to the moment that you heard your Eleven Labs voice clone for the first time. What was that like for you?

[00:06:27] Speaker 4: The first time I heard the voice, I thought it was amazing. It sounded exactly like I had before, and you literally wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I will not say what the first word I made my new voice say, but I can tell you that it began with F and ended in K. Nice.

[00:06:51] Speaker 2: When you started using your Eleven Labs voice with the people closest to you, your family, your friends, how did those conversations change, and what was their reaction to hearing your voice again?

[00:07:01] Speaker 4: Reactions from my friends and family have varied, and some laughed with joy and disbelief. But when I played it to my parents, they both cried, and maybe it felt like they had their son back.

[00:07:22] Speaker 2: Music has always been a really big part of who you are. Can you tell us the role that music has played in your life?

[00:07:28] Speaker 4: I've been a musician and a composer from roughly the age of 14. Being predominantly self-taught, I learned to play bass guitar, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, melodica, mandolin, and tenor banjo. My biggest love, though, was singing, which I did in the genres of Irish folk and heavy metal. I've spent most of my musical life performing live in various bands. Sadly, I have lost the ability to sing and play my instruments due to motor neurone disease, or ALS, as it is also called. Despite this, most of my time these days is spent still continuing to compose and produce my music. Doing so feels more important than ever to me now.

[00:08:21] Speaker 2: As your voice began to change due to ALS, you started working with your speech therapist and a fantastic member of our Impact team, Richard Cave, on something incredibly personal. You're singing Eleven Lab's voice clone. I'd like you to take us through that journey. What did it feel like to lose your singing voice, and what has it meant to you to find it again in this new way?

[00:08:44] Speaker 4: It was not as easy as creating my speaking voice. I had no high-quality recordings of myself singing. We had to record our voices in the studio. We had to use audio from videos on people's phones shot in noisy pubs. And a couple of recordings of me singing in my kitchen, again recorded on my phone. Losing my ability to sing had a deeply profound and devastating effect on me. So it's become easy for me to feel a lot of regret for not having recorded myself more before it was gone. That being said, the Eleven Lab's voice that we've created is wonderful. Eleven Lab's did amazing, and it definitely sounds like me. Just kind of feels like a different version of me.

[00:09:36] Speaker 2: Hey, look. It appears that your friends Nick on mandolin and Harry on violin have joined us on stage. Now, Patrick's speaking voice clone has given him... Yes. Patrick's Eleven Lab's voice clone has given him the ability to speak in his own voice again. But what you're about to hear has never been done before. This is the world premiere of Patrick's Eleven Lab's singing voice clone. And this is the first time that an individual with ALS has performed an original song live on stage with a personalized singing voice clone powered by Eleven Lab's and Eleven Music. Patrick, before we listen, please introduce your band and tell us a bit about the song.

[00:10:28] Speaker 4: So the musicians who joined me on stage are Nick Cocking and Harry Ma, who are members of the Ceilidh House Band, which is the Irish folk band that I spent 11 years performing with before my early retirement. Nick and Harry have composed their own parts to accompany the song you're about to hear. The lyrics in the song have been taken and repurposed from a song I wrote many years ago called Ghost of a Man I Never Met. Lyrically, it's an introspective song with a few different deeper meanings within it. But on the surface, it's a song dedicated to my great grandfather who passed away before I was born. I wish I could play that song for you today, but the technology currently doesn't allow me to control the voice beyond the words it says. Nevertheless, Richard and I worked hard to create this music in Eleven Labs, which is an original piece of work that we hope you will like.

[00:12:02] Speaker 5: I don't believe in God, but I believe in thee. I believe in all the things that I and you could be. So I'll drink a few, this here's to you, my heart of much regret. A sombre host to the gloomy ghost of a man I never met. I don't believe in God, but I believe in thee. Yeah, I believe in all the things that all of us could be. So I'll sit and dwell on that tolling bell that calls for you, my friend. Or the haunting chime of a year's supply that we never got to spend. Cos I'd love to see just what you'd make of me, and all the things we couldn't and wouldn't have been. Now through the photographs that join our path, I wish you'd lend an ear. Because there's more than a few things I'd say to you, if only you could hear. Yeah, through the photographs that join our path, well I wish that you would stare. Because maybe it's then, all the grief again, for a while I could forget. Cos I'd love to see just what you'd make of me, and all the things we couldn't and wouldn't have been. Yeah, I'd love to see just what you'd make of me, and all the things we never got to be.

[00:15:38] Speaker 1: Thank you.

[00:16:31] Speaker 2: Harry, what does it mean to you to be able to perform with Patrick again?

[00:16:40] Speaker 6: It means everything. Honestly, the silence has been so painful for Patrick, and we've missed him so much. And to be able to perform with him, and it's like, even though his voice has already been prepared, it is just the same as when we are performing with him live on the stage. I feel your presence, Patrick, so strongly. It's like your passion coming through, and your generous heart. Everything that you've put to make this music happen, I know it's been a really massive deal. And Richard as well has been really there with you. I'm so grateful that we can do this. I'm grateful to Eleven Labs as well, it's massive. It's really massive. Thank you.

[00:17:27] Speaker 1: Thank you.

[00:17:37] Speaker 7: For once, I'm lost for words, which anyone knows me is very unusual. It's just remarkable. Me and Paddy were on stage for over ten years together, and it's been two years since we last played together. It's just remarkable. Thank you to Richard, thank you to Eleven Labs, thank you to everybody and the amazing work. Let's try and get this out there for more people, yeah?

[00:18:11] Speaker 2: Patrick. Do you have any closing thoughts you'd like to leave the audience with?

[00:18:22] Speaker 4: The technology that you create changes lives. And when implemented with compassion, it can provide hope, support and meaning to people, in ways you can't fully appreciate without having lived it yourself. If I had a wish for Eleven Labs, it would be to keep developing the technology, so I can have even more control as a singer and composer. This is amazing technology, so let's keep developing it to be even more incredible. For now though, I want to say to everyone here and everyone involved in Eleven Labs, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

[00:19:14] Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Patrick, for sharing your voice with us. And thank you.