Just weeks after ElevenLabs debuted a generative AI voice engine that can create voice using text prompts, Hume AI is offering a series of AI voice bots within an easy-to-use app wrapper that can be used from a web browser.

The app is pulled from the company's own voice language model, EVI2, and is being used on a "supplemental" basis with additional Llms, including Claude3.5Haiku from Anthropic, positioned as a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT Advanced Voice model (which hit Mac and Windows).

And while I'm impressed by how easy it is to get started, so far there are definitely some tweaks, as is done in some aspects of the app.

I've tested it with some general prompts and found some of it to be really impressive while others are lagging behind.

The fun of the Hume AI app is that it has its own tone and style so that you feel like you are choosing to talk to different "people" for different topics

For example, there is one for quick answers in the chatbot style, but another for philosophical advice. It is focused. Each works the same way - you click and speak through the microphone, and if you want to do it the necessary Hume account is

I asked the Quick Answers chatbot the height of the Eiffel Tower and got a simple answer and how it was added over time. And a particular section of it

I asked Storytelling One a story about a car, but I didn't expect an epic comparable to Pixar, but it tripped over and over. It repeated the line and even changed the voice at one point that was pretty jarring, but it was happy to receive additional prompts to direct the flow of the story (sadly, the story it provided was of a car called Cara looking for power, unlikely to win any prize soon).

On the other hand, there is some overlap between some voices and I have found that there is actually a good way to admit that no one has a real answer.

I asked the voice of spirituality how I could live in that moment, and it felt the breeze through my hair, the sun on my skin, and suggested that I try to eat mango weirdly.

The same prompt on a deeper question bot prompted the smell of my morning coffee and the way sunlight hit my desk for some reason. Interestingly, deeper questions like storytelling The bot kept repeating several lines of the dialog.

I'm definitely interested to see how things expand from here, and Hume builds from whether I can solve those little teething problems.