Inside ElevenLabs: Voice AI, Cloning Ethics, and the End of the Call Centre?

0:00 Damian Naughton: Very soon it will be normal to have your own AI assistant that you can speak to that not only gives you advice and proactively recommends things, but can go and actually take action with your permission, with the right guardrails, of course. And that action will often be speaking or connecting with a brand or an organization to potentially go and buy something or make a change to a flight. And on the other end of that is sometimes a human, but also more and more so will be an AI agent as well.

0:31 Georgie Healy: Damien, podcasting is my one job. You guys have very realistic conversations on the platform that I can't tell the difference between real humans and those. Should I be looking for a new job? Hello and welcome to In the Blink of AI. I'm Georgia Healy and today we have Damien. He's the GM of ANZ at ElevenLabs and he's currently 3 to 4 Xing the team growth plan here in Australia. Australia and New Zealand. 11 labs. You might think of them as voice AI. That's definitely what they're famous for. They have 11 API, 11 creative and 11 agents. Now Damien's been having fun with a fridge mounted family AI assistant in the voice of Michael Caine. I actually use the app to read me back my own substack in the voice of Lawrence Olivier.

1:23 Georgie Healy: It made me sound so impressive and we talked about what AI music we would like to bring back. I will save that for the show. Damian has some really good perspectives with his years in managing and leading teams and he has a hot, hot take on enterprise AI. If tech leads instead of the business, the guardrails and the ways that you are approaching it are going to fall behind. I will let him explain that in better detail in the show. And we have probably one of my favorite lines of the podcasts I've ever done, which is that tall poppy syndrome here is a scourge on society, to be honest. Frankly, I agree. Let's dive into the show for that and so many more hot takes.

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2:39 Georgie Healy: Can you please share your AI hack of the week?

2:42 Damian Naughton: AI hack. I'll share something that I built recently with 11 labs, of course, and N8N and it's. It's close to where I wanted to get to, but I think there's still a lot more to go. I've actually built a Family AI assistant that sits on the fridge on an iPad using ElevenLabs, which is essentially taking all the life admin, but not just reactively, proactively as well. And we call him the Butler. The Butler proactively talks to me in the morning as I'm making the morning coffee to talk about anything from how you've got this event coming up. It accesses the school calendars for all of the kids. It knows when important dates are coming up. Have we bought a present?

3:26 Damian Naughton: Would you like some recommendations to. Hey, would you like. Maybe you're running low on bread or milk and the next part is hooking up with Harris Farm, Woolworths and the rest of it to actually make purchases as well. But it's actually. It was easy to set up and it's really impressive.

3:43 Georgie Healy: My hack is very similar but different. And I thought, how can you top Lawrence Olivier who also have on the app. What I did is I have a semi humorous substack bite size once a week. Having Laurence Olivier read that, my own substack back out to me. I'm like, wow, this is world class writing. It's incredible.

4:08 Damian Naughton: Exactly. The voice matters, right? The voice that delivers something actually matters.

4:13 Georgie Healy: It genuinely does matter. And there is something powerful about the connection you have with these voices. Right. Brings me back to Wuthering Heights and being able to hear. Yeah, the old school one. Old school one. He's in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing. Fantastic hack. The reason I'm so thrilled to speak to you is 11 Labs is launching here in Australia. This is huge news. So excited. First of all, what is your role at ElevenLabs and set the scene about the team here and plans for the team?

4:47 Damian Naughton: Sure would love to. So we have a bit of a philosophy of no job titles at ElevenLabs. We like to hire people that are committed to the cause and no task or job is beneath them and hiring for the right culture. So we're light on job titles, but my job title essentially is general manager of regions. So Anz, we are aggressively expanding into a lot of international regions and Anz is one of them. So really excited and proud to be leading the team here. We have four people in region at the moment, all hired this year and we've got plans to 3-4x the size of the team Very quickly we are launching our presence in region, but we already have a really strong customer base here and that was one of the reasons why Anz was one of the markets we're expanding in.

5:43 Damian Naughton: So we've got a great list of customers here. Already today and there's some really strong signals from the market that organizations are shifting from, you know, proof of concept that goes to die maybe in the corner of one pocket of the organization to just a real understanding that voice AI to communicate with customers and also internally is going to be critical to the organization moving forward. So there's some really strong signals in market and you know, it's really important to have a local team with local market knowledge and can really embed deeply with the customer to understand their problems, you know, because this is a really challenging, complex space.

6:27 Damian Naughton: Voice AI is, you know, very complex to get right at scale and to make it human like so it really requires a local team with local resources to work with our customers closely. So I'm really excited.

6:43 Georgie Healy: It's so exciting because voice AI I do think of 11 labs and have for a few years. A lot of our listeners are in the tech space and the startup space and familiar. You mentioned that we're ready here and voice AI is a unique space in AI. What were the signals that we were ready and are you allowed to share any of the customers like, you know, or a nudge for the listeners globally?

7:10 Damian Naughton: Sure, yeah. Well, we're having our launch event this week and we've got some amazing customers speaking on stage that are already attributed to Elevenlabs, from Xero to Heidi Health to employment Hero. So some really interesting brands and customers here locally with lots of different use cases from deploying a voice AI agent to make outbound calls to customers that otherwise would never really get any love. That's on one side. On the other side we have a completely different use case which is Andromeda who has, I'm sure you're familiar with Andromeda but for those who are not, they have an amazing use case for a voice AI and human like voices within their robot.

7:58 Damian Naughton: That is Abby and Abby is, you know, great tech for good story which is visiting patients in aged care facilities already residency I should say in aged care facilities that otherwise maybe would not have, you know, not getting regular visits and to have a human like experience to engage and have better outcomes for residents is another great use case. So there's lots of different customers that we work with here locally and a variety of different use cases. But I think signals wise. Back to your question. I mentioned before about you know, little proof of concepts that sort of go to die in a corner of the business. My observations in the market, I think there's, there's, there's probably two things.

8:43 Damian Naughton: One is there has been an incredible Amount of inbound inquiry, which is a clear signal whenever, you know. Eleven Labs has a really strong PLG emotion globally with fantastic success. And we have evolved our platform into more of an end to end agentic AI platform with voice at the center because it's the hardest one to, to really get right. But it's not just Voice of us. You need to be multimodal. But the signals that we're getting in the market are really not only complementing the human experience to create better touch points and customer experiences for end customers. So it's not only that, but it's the ability to branch out into different parts of the business to provide different experiences to customers that just otherwise wouldn't make financial sense to have humans doing so. So that's where we've seen some really interesting signals in the market.

9:45 Georgie Healy: Incredible. I hadn't even thought about Abby the robot who I am personally familiar with the business and the robot in these aged care facilities and I never thought, oh my gosh, voice is the missing piece there. That's so incredible. So very excited to hear more about that. See more about that.

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10:46 Georgie Healy: Can we zoom out a moment? You started your career like I'm listening to your very tech and business literate, but you started your career as a journalist, is that right?

10:57 Damian Naughton: I did, I did. Many years ago now. Yes. Didn't last too long, was only a couple of years.

11:02 Georgie Healy: I feel like journalism is still really important. But how do you see AI impacting journalism and that kind of integrity of writing?

11:14 Damian Naughton: Yes, good question. Look, I think over time and I saw it even when, I mean I'm going back to early 2000s and even then you could see perhaps the industry was going to be challenged by technology and there were less and less roles and entry level roles. There's good and bad, you know, good and bad. That comes with technology improvements. I would say journalism has been, it's been a bit choppy. Right. There's been a lot of great things to come from technology, but I think in the journalism space it really has eroded journalism in my opinion. And you know, to find quality journalism these days, quality investigative journalism in particular, that is Non biased. And that is a trusted source is. Is really hard. A lot of people consume their news on social media and that creates inherent problems I think in society. But that's a. That's probably a whole nother podcast.

12:18 Georgie Healy: Yeah, that would be an interesting podcast. I do know I can very quickly tell them people are getting their journalism from like tech, fintech, Twitter and things like that. But where do you get your knowledge now? AI is moving so quickly.

12:33 Damian Naughton: Yeah. So I probably say the three main sources for me, number one is afr and so I skew towards the, the Fairfax, the old Fairfax type of publications. So AFR and smh. Yeah, and smh, even today does some really good information investigative journalism work. So that's for my personal and business readings. So personal smh, AFR for business and then the ABC as well, which I find is a good balance. So that's where I go to consume my media. But I'm very much a. I'm a habitual once a day type of news consumer. So I kind of have the opposite of fomo. I don't require like a stream of information coming at me left, right and center from all different places. I just have the habit of I know where I wanted to source my information, I go there once a day and then I move on with my day and the next day I'll come back.

13:29 Georgie Healy: That's my New Year's resolution for next year. Currently I am the stream of information at all times person. Instagram. Right. So like please stay away because that's the problem. Right.

13:39 Damian Naughton: It's just a pretty slow. Yeah, I know. Yeah. I struggle with LinkedIn as it is, let alone anything else, but.

13:45 Georgie Healy: Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. Very fascinating to get that perspective from an ex journalist, by the way. Look, before interviewing you, I did look at your LinkedIn. I was really aware of Hyperanna where you used to work because I worked at Accenture and I think we used the tools and it was very exciting, very successful. And then it was acquired by Alterics, which is a product I used in a different consulting firm since then. So much has changed since this tech was launched and blew our minds with the evolution of AI. What made those products special and before a time that I existed that might have not used them.

14:27 Damian Naughton: Yeah, in many ways there's been so much that has changed. I think that's going back seven years, seven to eight years now when I was at hyperanna, then before it was acquired by Alteryx. And so much has changed since then. But testament to the co founders and Natalie, the co founder And CEO was amazing to work with and a really smart team there. They had a really clear vision that was ahead of the market. So what you're seeing today, a lot with vendors today is what hyperanna was working on and selling seven years ago. There was a bit of ETL required to, to transition between the data set that a customer typically has and to extract like natural language insights for every business user, which was the premise of Hyper Owner.

15:14 Damian Naughton: But super smart team, ahead of its time. So much has changed yet I still think that there is a bit of a gap with the everyday business user still having to rely on dashboards and reports and without having easy access to insights. So I still think there's a, there's a big opportunity to continue developing that space.

15:36 Georgie Healy: Your colleague Carlos went semi viral on a podcast that I adore and Love called 20 VC talking about the high performance culture at Elevenlabs. But you're really passionate about. Yes, high performance. But I read that you're also interested in sustainability and enjoyment. Can you tell me how both. How can you be high performing and also sustainable and also maybe even enjoy your life? Like how.

16:01 Damian Naughton: Sure, yes, yes. I was going to ask you what sort of sustainability we're talking about here on the other. But I know what you're saying. Yes, absolutely. So yes, Carlos has had some quite some viral moments in some of his. Some of his podcasts like I think the. And you may have heard or people may have seen the 20x their quota. Like 20x salary for quota.

16:23 Georgie Healy: Let's explain that too just in case people don't understand. Sure. They've got a 100k salary.

16:29 Damian Naughton: Yeah. So I'll clarify this. So It's a base salary 20x of your base salary. So typically an enterprise AE might have a 5050 split of base and variable for their salary package. So if someone has 100k as their base then their quota would be 20x that so $2 million. So that's what we're referring to here. But I think there's a couple of things if we strip this back that we look for. And firstly in many ways Elevenlabs has the growth story has rewritten along with other companies as well. Not just Elevenlabs but rewritten the way that a fast growing tech company grows to get to I think at the point roughly 400 million ARR with or sorry 400 million ARR with roughly 400 employees.

17:16 Damian Naughton: Those multiples are wild compared to your more legacy SaaS organizations. So if you are joining Elevenlabs or really any other fast growing tech Companies today, if you're not having a view of at least 3, 4, 5 Xing yourself, then you probably shouldn't be there. And for us we like to use 11. So I'm going to say 11 Xing yourself. But that's really one of the traits that we look for. We're looking for the best of the best, but we also look for people who are at a time in their career that see the opportunity ahead of us in the next few years and genuinely see the opportunity for this to be a career defining role for them. And to, you know, you hear the, the saying of do the best work of their lives or the best work of your life, which is, yes, that's a little bit cheesy but that's genuinely what, what you want to have.

18:11 Damian Naughton: But I'd also add to that is that you want people that see the moment and the opportunity ahead of them and genuinely are in a position life wise where they say, right, this is my career defining role. This is going to be the most successful role that I ever have and I'm going to put absolutely everything into it. That's the type of person that we want. So it talks to that, I think a lot. It also talks to the success that we've had and the signals from the market. I'd also say that we are moving up segment a little bit to the enterprise segment where we've had a really strong PLG motion that has already gone up segment but we're just doubling down on up segment as well.

18:55 Damian Naughton: So I'll give you my take on the sustainability element of this because coming from different types of organizations and where you'll see a lot of, I would say a legacy traditional approach to sales, pressure of performance, which is pressure from the top down. Every quarter is the most important quarter in the company's history. Every month is the most important month. That's great. Every week is the most important week. Every deal is the most important deal. That, that only gets you so far and I'm not suggesting that you, you shouldn't have pressure in an organization, but that has diminishing returns over time and it's hard to continue to replicate.

19:40 Georgie Healy: Right.

19:40 Damian Naughton: It's not sustainable. If you think about a, a personal trainer and someone who performs really well when on the Monday mornings when they have their one to one with the personal trainer, they always turn up. Right. Because their personal trainer is going to be there and the personal trainer to get the best out of that person is, is yelling or shouting at them. Right. And of course they have an Amazing training session. We want the people that are intrinsically motivated that train like that no matter what day of the week it is and whether or not the personal trainer is there. So in practice, like how does that actually work? The first thing I look for personally is that I met the, the example I mentioned before.

20:23 Damian Naughton: So are they at a point in time where they recognize, hey, I'm going to go all in on this because there's an opportunity here for this to be the most successful role of my career. That is number one that I'll look for. Number two is a personal connection to the mission. I think that's really important as well. If you don't fundamentally believe in the impact that your technology can have on customers and the impact it can have on their customers, if you're not all in on that, then you're in the wrong space. And when you get people that are like that, it oozes out of them, right? So when they're speaking to customers, it's very obvious. So that passion is very important.

21:09 Damian Naughton: And that's infectious as well, right? That's infectious throughout the team but also every time you meet with a customer or a partner or a potential customer. So I look for finding the right people at the right time. I will also look for a personal connection to the mission and then I will allow a lot of self selection from an A. Let's just take an AE as an example. Typically it is okay, AE comes on board, they start, you get, you give them their quota. In this case it might be 20x, right? Which can be, which can be scary, which can be daunting. And you look at it and think, oh, how am I going to get there? But before even doing that I'd be sitting down with said AE who has kind of just started gone through onboarding and we give them a challenge to think about.

22:00 Damian Naughton: If I could 11x myself, what is the possibility that I could get to. So what is the art of the possible here? So go away Georgie, as an AE and think about if everything went right and I 11x myself and I had support from all pockets of the organization and everything went really well. Where could you get to? And I would like you to come back and self select a. A bit of a crazy scary stretch goal is something that you look at and say, oh, that's really challenging but it's achievable. But you select that, right? And then we work together to co design a path there. That path needs to be like A and have clarity on how to get to that path and Once you do that, you then have someone who is all in on doing the best work of their life.

22:52 Damian Naughton: They are connected personally to the mission which oozes out of them. You also get a self deterministic outcome for a stretch goal. And then you get as a result of that, you have ownership and accountability and you have intrinsic motivation for the individual long term to get to that goal. Right. And it's not just necessarily smooth sailing from there. I wish it was as simple as that, of course. But your role or my role starts to become a little bit different. Rather than every week bringing up a dashboard and saying, hey, you haven't got this and you're pressuring those pressure tactics, it is a little bit different. There's intrinsic motivation and lots of studies will show you that intrinsic motivation always beats the external motivation.

23:44 Georgie Healy: Oh, totally. Like if you have a personal trainer that yells at you to get into shape, does it feel the same as you being like, I have a goal and this is the goal I want and I'm gonna fight for? Also reminds me of like think of those amazing portfolio careers. Right. They were at PayPal at this time. They were at Stripe in the early days. Like if that doesn't set you on fire of like, oh man, I wish I was there at that time. And this is the chance to be there at that time. And you're kind of not excited by that possibility.

24:17 Damian Naughton: Exactly. And you can, you can, you can see that straight away. Right. And then, then, then the goal from there is your role or my role from there is there's going to be ups and downs right. Along the way. But there is, there's, there's, then there's coaching and I'm essentially acting as a consultant.

24:34 Georgie Healy: Yeah.

24:34 Damian Naughton: And trusted advisor of the team members that to, you know, not only that, but then I'm just an extension of their team.

24:42 Georgie Healy: Right.

24:42 Damian Naughton: And the best AES will, they're a quarterback, but they've got an army of people working with them. You cannot be a solo operator AE in this day and age because you can't 11x yourself. So I've become an extension of the selling team, as does the founder of the organization, as do the cross functional resources that you have globally. And I'm consulting and coaching along the way and I'm there through the ups and the downs. And the last thing I'll say is like a really strong focus on a weekly cadence which is very much progress driven. So whatever project you have, big project you have or it might be a big deal that you're working on Whatever your strategic, like big rocks or big bets are, it is a really strong focus on weekly progress so that you're inching up the mountain. In the scenario where you've got a big enterprise deal, for example, well, there's

25:43 Georgie Healy: a number of roles that you have available. I hope they listen to that and they nail the interview because there's no excuse. Now let's talk about how 11 Labs first started. I found this really lovely. Two Polish guys frustrated by badly dubbed American films. First of all, true or not true?

26:00 Damian Naughton: True.

26:00 Georgie Healy: Amazing. I also do my best work when I'm super frustrated and angry. How successful are you guys now? Humble beginnings.

26:10 Damian Naughton: Well, firstly on the dubbing. That dubbing story is really interesting. Personally, I can't even watch a movie that has. That's not only that it's not dubbed even if it's just an English movie that, if the timing is slightly off, that just. That grinds my gears. Right. I cannot even watch it. So I feel for the co founders.

26:30 Georgie Healy: Can you imagine?

26:31 Damian Naughton: Exactly. Can you imagine watching a badly dubbed movie? And not only that, they. Because dubbing is actually quite expensive to rep, to produce with voice with, with real humans. Apparently what they used to do is just have one person dubbing an entire film. So can you imagine not only watching a dubbed film, but watching a dubbed film where you only have one person doing the dubbing? So for every voice, just one person can't imagine. But yeah, it's a really, it's a really interesting founding story and the guys are geniuses. But back to your point about how, how successful are we? We have recently announced we've passed 500 million in ARR within four years, which is crazy, crazy growth.

27:22 Damian Naughton: Especially as I mentioned before, for the number of employees that we have, that's crazy growth. And I think what's even crazier is it feels like. And I'm only four weeks in, right. But it feels like we're only just getting started. And the progression from being the, you know what we're known as the world's leading voice AI platform to the end to end voice AI agents platform. That's a really. And that's our fastest growing part of the organization and that's where we're spending most of our time with customers today. And the addressable market there is enormous. So yes, we've been successful to date, globally excited to bring that to Australia and New Zealand to expand on what we have today.

28:10 Damian Naughton: But in many ways it feels like, well, I've only just got started, but it feels like we as a company are just getting started.

28:16 Georgie Healy: I keep seeing hockey stick curves and they're never actually hockey stick curves. And this is like you are on that tippy tip part of the hockey stick.

28:25 Damian Naughton: Yes.

28:26 Georgie Healy: How do you think Aussies will respond to voice AI? Like we've touched upon it a little bit. It kind of reminds me of robotics almost. It's like when you talk about the incredible use cases. Amazing. But what's the initial reaction to voice AI and, and how, how do you go to market with it?

28:47 Damian Naughton: Well, in many ways a lot of people I think have been burnt a little bit by voice AI because. Yeah, well, exactly right. And if you think, if you go, go back right back to like 80s and 90s and even Alexa and the like, there's been implementations of voice AI. Most of them sound really robotic. And even if it doesn't quite sound robotic, the ability to interact with it as you would a human has been non existent for a long time. So there is certainly an education piece that. Unless you're in the space, right. If you're in the space, it's a little bit different. But what's interesting is execs and business leaders, that's the opinion that they have for the most part.

29:36 Georgie Healy: Right.

29:36 Damian Naughton: They're thinking about the, the Stephen Hawking voice or the bad Alexa experience. And everyone's had that experience probably with, with voice AI to some degree where it's that robotic experience. So there's a big education piece I think in the market and there's a, there's really a penny drop moment where when you demo an experience which is genuinely human, like it is expressive and you can feel like you can have an interaction that is, it's not the same as a human. Right. Because how we're sitting with each other right now is always going to be different. Right. If you think about if we were doing this, even if we were doing this virtually over Zoom or Google Meet, for example, even that would be a different experience for sure.

30:24 Damian Naughton: So there was that element of human, of humanness that will never be completely replaced. But we have gotten so far with progression of the technology where you can genuinely have an extremely expressive human like experience and conversation with AI. So I think a big part of it is, is the education, the technology is there today. The challenge is very, once you get down into the detail and the edge cases and the nuance to do something at scale and to have it with low latency, that's where it becomes really challenging. Like it's a really challenging problem to solve. And that's why we have launched in region because customers are either solving this right now or attempting to solve it.

31:15 Damian Naughton: And it's a matter of where do we get to that is good enough to go into production where we're not losing customers and we're actually creating a better experience. So you're seeing that tipping point now, and we're excited to be a part of it.

31:28 Georgie Healy: Yeah, that's classic startup, right? Like, we have to get to market, but, you know, if you wait too long, you've missed it. So speaking of the challenges, it reminds me, you know, we want it to be perfect. We want it to be exactly like a human conversation, but then you get accused of, well, now it's uncanny. Valley. Do you want to talk a little bit about voice cloning and where the ethics come into having Michael Caine's voice or Lawrence Olivier's voice? How do you guys address that and have voices on the platform?

32:00 Damian Naughton: Yeah, great question. So safety and ethics is really, really important to us. And just like with any technology that progresses to a point, especially when you're thinking about AI, you need to be really careful about how it's deployed. We have voice verification on the platform. There is lots of safeguards that we have in place. So it's incumbent upon the vendor, but also the company to make sure they're getting it right as well the customer who is actually deploying. So safety and verification and following those protocols and guardrails is really important.

32:35 Georgie Healy: How did you get certain voices? How do you. How?

32:41 Damian Naughton: Yeah, so for celebrities, for example, we have partnerships with celebrities that recognize the tech for good element of this. We also have an amazingly successful voice marketplace where voice actors, or anyone really can do a professional voice clone, upload it to the platform, and as a customer, you get this amazing library of all different voices to choose from. So I actually, to help me prepare for this conversation, I actually built a very quick, easy voice AI agent just to do a bit of prep, right. And so I just chose a voice. Now I can't go and I can't go and clone your voice without your consent. So consent is really important here. So I wouldn't go and do that because I would need your consent or you actually need to go and upload, upload your voice for me to use on the platform.

33:36 Damian Naughton: But the reason why that's interesting is, you know, voice actors who are probably, you know, not as in demand for work as maybe they used to be. This gives them an opportunity to. To earn money on the platform for every time their voice is used, which, which might be for a Product demonstration video, or it might be for an audiobook using their voice. And there's some amazing stories about these voice actors who are in the top 10 voices for 11 Labs and come up to the 11 Labs team at one of the events and saying, hey, like, my life has changed because I've got. I'm number three on the platform and now I'm making X amount of money through this. So on the tech for good side, that's some really great stories there.

34:17 Georgie Healy: That's brilliant. I'm thinking of some audiobooks that I've listened to and I just didn't like the voice. I'd love to just swap that out.

34:25 Damian Naughton: Swap it out.

34:26 Georgie Healy: Yeah, that'd be great.

34:27 Damian Naughton: Michael Caine.

34:27 Georgie Healy: Yeah, Michael Caine.

34:28 Damian Naughton: Yep.

34:29 Georgie Healy: Okay. And how much, how much do you need? You know, I've got, if I gave permission, I've got a library of podcast videos. I've got hundreds of hours. How much do you need to fully encompass someone's voice on the platform?

34:45 Damian Naughton: Yeah. So there's a minimum of 30 seconds just to get something that sounds similar to your voice. And it's actually pretty impressive what you can get with just 30 seconds. So there are unfortunately lots of circumstances where, you know, people lose their voice or their ability to speak in life and occasions where if you didn't really see that coming or you didn't plan ahead, you're not going to do a professional voice clone, of course, but you can actually. There's been many stories of people going back through old voicemails or maybe it's a wedding speech that was caught on camera. And to be able to use that, even if it's just 30 seconds, to create a similar voice, that is a voice clone. Now, that's the, that's the bare minimum, Right. We would recommend 60 seconds, you know, one, one, one to two minutes.

35:35 Georgie Healy: So not much.

35:36 Damian Naughton: Yeah, well, just to get something that is similar, right? It's, it's similar so you can hear it being played back and you can hear, okay, that's my voice. But to do a professional voice clone, we, we recommend one to two hours.

35:50 Georgie Healy: Yeah.

35:51 Damian Naughton: And that is recorded audio of high quality audio. Right. So if we're in a room like this, we could spend one to two hours and that's where you get the genuine voice clone. So, yeah, it's almost like, think about it as a, as, I don't know, an artist that is painting a portrait of you. If they spend 30 seconds looking at you and then you run away and I'm doing the painting, I'm a terrible Artist, by the way. So I would not, I would not. It would look nothing like you. That would look like, you know, it would resemble you to a degree. Right. If they spent two minutes with you, they would have a better mental picture and then to do a proper portrait.

36:29 Damian Naughton: But if I spent a few hours with you and actually painted the portrait and in its entirety whilst you sat there for two hours, that's going to be far more similar. So that, like, thinking about it, in that analogy, you get. Yeah, 30 seconds as a minimum. But to get a proper professional voice clone, one to two hours of high

36:47 Georgie Healy: quality audio, that makes sense. Like, you know, even the way people laugh is very unique and things like that.

36:53 Damian Naughton: Yes.

36:53 Georgie Healy: Incredible. That's still so much less than I would have assumed. Okay. Listeners might be wondering, what about scammers? I have given permission, I have put my voice on the platform and now a scammer has used that and is calling up my sister, help bail me out, I need money or something. Of course there's going to be headlines about this. What are you thinking around voice AI in general and being used in nefarious ways.

37:22 Damian Naughton: So again, the position on 11Lab from ElevenLabs perspective is very strong on this, that we want to do whatever is possible within, you know, within reason, to not only prevent things like this happening, but also for detection and then shutting something down if something does happen. Right. So that's. And we have a safety team that handles that. So we're cognizant of the importance of that with any technology that has the ability for misuse. That's the reality of it. And as I mentioned before, it's incumbent upon the vendor, but also the company and the customer, whoever's involved and all society really, for us to be safeguarding ourselves around that. I'd say to your example, right, firstly, an education piece which will just gradually, which will happen gradually over time. We all know not to respond to the Nigerian prince email.

38:18 Georgie Healy: Yes, right, yes. Called out a few times. I'm kidding. I wasn't. Yes.

38:23 Damian Naughton: We all know not to respond that. So I think there's some similar education in the market that once voice AI becomes a little bit more ubiquitous, that there is some education in the market. Just to understand that. How I do need to be a little bit careful, just like we do for any AI with deep fakes. So I think that's a component of it. But there's also some common sense, Right. If your sister in this scenario was calling you, you would like to think that you would pick up. Right. So on one Hand, it's going to be, it's going to be human like and it's going to be expressive and we've come a long way. On the other hand, you know, in that scenario you should be able to pick up or hang on something, something is not quite right here and even think about like, I actually find this quite annoying.

39:15 Damian Naughton: But when I think almost every banking app right now is even though you face id, right. And you go to transfer money to someone or pay for something and they treat you like you're, you're an idiot. Right. Or you're, or you're an idiot. Okay. You have to like select the use case. Why am I doing this? Is this really you? Is this. So there's so many like safeguards in place. Unfortunately because of scammers and fraud we have to go down that path. So hopefully that will just continue. Like the market will be self educated to a degree, but it is a concern. Right. And I'll talk to another use case from a customer that is quite pertinent to this topic.

39:57 Damian Naughton: We have a customer using our voices to provide a service to some of the largest banks and telcos in Australia which is almost like a reverse DDoS type of use case. So what I mean by that is in practice if, let's say you call someone, let's say you're a scammer. Okay? Let's, let's play this out. Right.

40:19 Georgie Healy: Crazier things have happened.

40:20 Damian Naughton: Yes. Next role. Yep, yep. So you call up and you try and obtain, you call up a bank, one of the big four banks, and you try and obtain some information. Let's say you've got an email address from someone or you found some information online. You're trying to impersonate me, so you try and access my account. The bank of course has training and procedures in place to recognize, hey, this Georgie character. A little bit shady, right. This phone call is a little bit dodgy and I think this is fraudulent.

40:48 Georgie Healy: Right.

40:48 Damian Naughton: This is a scam. So you would then get handed off to this voice AI platform which is using 11 Labs technology as part, as part of the technology, which then keeps you on the line for as long, as long as possible. Plays along, right. And gathers as much intel as possible on you and what you're trying to do to help build safeguards in place so it prevents fraud. So really interesting. That's fascinating use case there.

41:20 Georgie Healy: It reminds me of, you know, the James Bond movies. It's like they're trying to figure out where your location is so they keep you on the line. As long as possible so that they can find. Figure out where to torpedo. That is fascinating. Actually, you might find this semi interesting. We had a podcast guest who had a very successful exit. 180 million or something. And he, he said on the show he's written down a specific password. No one's allowed to talk, but he's given it to his boomer parents and said if you get a call from me, because he's got a podcast himself and it sounds like me and it sounds like I need something or want something or whatever. This is the special safe word. And you can't say it out loud because who knows? He's a little paranoid. But isn't it fascinating that people are starting to re educate their friends and loved ones and family members?

42:09 Damian Naughton: Well, now that you said it on the podcast, hopefully they don't track down that house.

42:13 Georgie Healy: Thankfully he didn't write it down, but yes, imagine. Imagine. Yeah, I'm like, which drawer is it? Yeah.

42:20 Damian Naughton: Yes, exactly.

42:21 Georgie Healy: Yeah.

42:21 Speaker C: Yeah.

42:22 Damian Naughton: I love, I love that it's just written down on a piece of paper, like going through it with all the technology we have and just like, yeah,

42:27 Georgie Healy: this is the thing though, because with passwords in folders and things, things can get hacked.

42:33 Damian Naughton: Yeah. All the bitcoin stories about.

42:35 Georgie Healy: Exactly.

42:36 Speaker C: Safety.

42:39 Georgie Healy: Fascinating. And last question on this. When it comes to music, everyone, you know, we were even talking just before recording. That's what people remember when it comes to. To AI and sound is, you know, artists that have since passed away love to hear an Elvis song. Or, you know, there's. You mentioned, is it creating from scratch or is it reimagining existing work? Can you talk to me a little bit about this space and are you guys in the music space as well?

43:11 Damian Naughton: We are through our 11Creative platform. Thanks for the plug. So we have essentially three parts of the platform. 11 API, 11Creative and 11Agents. But the 11Creative platform is designed to do just that. You can create. There's lots of use cases where you're not necessarily going to go and procure a new song or you're going to have humans create a new song. It could just be for a product video and you can create your own music. Like create me this and it's going to create you the music. Right. So that's part of the. Part of the platform. Back to your question. Elvis. Right, Elvis. Thankfully, Elvis has lots of songs if you want to listen to some Elvis songs.

43:49 Damian Naughton: But I think it's two. Yeah, there is two parts to this. One is the technology that I find incredible. That's you know, that I think we're seeing a lot of advantage from right now is the ability to take something that has previously been recorded, and it could be an artist like a Tupac or a Biggie Smalls or a Kurt Cobain. I'm thinking about all the artists who have been really successful and popular but have died early. Right. And to. To. To grab previous recordings, maybe some unreleased edits, and to create whole new tracks and songs, of course, with consent of whoever is managing their estate.

44:28 Georgie Healy: Right.

44:29 Damian Naughton: Is. Is really valuable to. And amazing for fans and music lovers alike, provided it's a. It's a nice song. Right. So that's. I think that's really interesting technology that I think has incredible value.

44:43 Georgie Healy: Who would you want? Who would you be? Who'd be on your bring them back list?

44:49 Damian Naughton: I would say. I would say Kurt. I find. I find Kurt really, really interesting and intriguing. I'm a sucker for haunting, painful voices

44:59 Georgie Healy: in music Seattle vibes.

45:01 Damian Naughton: So I love, like, the Nerd. I love the Unplugged in New York album, for example. But anyway, I think there's. I think he died at 27. That's like sort of that golden age where you need to make sure you get past. So I would say Kurt is my answer to that.

45:15 Georgie Healy: Yeah.

45:15 Damian Naughton: Yeah.

45:16 Georgie Healy: Let's talk about enterprise companies, because normally when I think of AI and speed and disruption, even think of enterprises on the opposite end, you know, perhaps, you know, less open to change and disruption. What. What are you finding? And before that, you've worked at Salesforce, you've worked at News Corp. Do you think these companies can adapt to this time in AI and what. What would be the signs that. That you think that they're on the right path?

45:51 Damian Naughton: Bit to unpack here. So I'll. I'll. You might have to remind me of the second part of that question, because I'll go. I didn't do the first one.

45:56 Georgie Healy: Yeah, that's a lot.

45:59 Damian Naughton: Look, I think Australia is a really interesting market where it's obviously a relatively small market compared to other regions in the world where for the most part, there's two or three, sometimes four big players in every industry vertical. And sure, there's some challenger or digital brands underneath that, but with that, it means that there's a lot of safety and security of being in that top three, top four. And lots of those organizations, if you go back through the last 10, 20, 30 years, going back in the day, they're buying lots of IBM, they're buying lots of Microsoft. There's lots of Safe bets those organizations can make and have made in the past.

46:43 Damian Naughton: On one hand, I'll say that I think what you're seeing with Genai is I think it is shifting. The market is shifting. In my observation, I referenced before the example where little proof of concepts sort of go to die in one pocket of the organization because with great intent it gets a little bit too hard basket. My observation is, and speaking to customers is that is changing over time. There are lots of really progressive CTOs, CIOs out there in the market. I think part of the challenge is that the reluctance to really go for an edge use case or to do something different or unique means that if they get something wrong, the impact for their personal brand, but also for the organization can be quite damaging.

47:33 Damian Naughton: And we've seen examples with AI, chatbots and voice AI even recently where that has been the case. So I think that that's a challenge. But I think we're seeing a bit of a shift in the market where organizations have gone from, hey, let's try this over here. If it doesn't work, that's all right. Let's continue to. Actually, we really recognize that if we let's take a contact center, for example. I think there's a recognition in the market that the customer experience is two parts to this. The customer experience of calling or getting a call from a call center, I think we could all agree is subpar for the vast majority. Right?

48:15 Georgie Healy: Not a fan.

48:15 Damian Naughton: That's maybe putting it nicely. Okay. And with that, not only is it subpar, but there's a huge exorbitant cost to having a contact center, especially if it is onshore. And sometimes that's just an outsourced function that is offshore. But even so, it could be three to four dollars Aussie for a phone call. Right. To handle one of these customer inquiries. And most of the time the customer inquiry is probably not even complex enough to warrant having that conversation. Now, this is an area where there is clearly everyone would agree lowest hanging fruit for voice AI. My observation is that voice AI will complement, will complement humans in a call center.

49:03 Damian Naughton: There is absolutely a requirement and a need for humans to persist in the customer experience. But there is underneath that, like that's the high level, really important VIP touch point or complex case which is human. But really when you start peeling back underneath that, you start to get to the area where you can actually scale of significance and provide a better customer experience, which should be the end goal at a fraction of of the cost. Having said that, there is a lot of I Think there's a sentiment in the media and the public that any organization who looks to repurpose staff by implementing AI, that's a really dangerous path I think publicly for organizations to go through.

49:53 Damian Naughton: So what I'm observing at the moment is an interesting time in the market where the technology is now there to not handle every use case but to complement humans. Yet I think there is, you know, there is a really high bar that companies in Australia and New Zealand have when it comes to getting it right because the ramifications of getting it wrong are probably disproportionate to the real life to in my opinion, what the ramifications should be.

50:23 Georgie Healy: 100% agree. It's like this intolerance for failure and we see in the US failure is just part of it. We see it in the startup ecosystem like, yeah, I'll build something else. It doesn't mean that I've made a choice that makes me a bad entrepreneur. It's just you try things, they work, they don't work. I love that answer. I also love the way you approached it. This is an old fashioned traditional enterprise type offering but it's, it's bad, it's bad right now. So the risk tolerance should be higher of trying something in AI and but yes, there are some companies, companies that, that risk tolerance is low. And yeah, hopefully I think that is changing and hopefully that continues to change here in market.

51:13 Damian Naughton: Yeah and I think we'll, we will get there. We'll get there. I think that the first thought goes to what exists today with a human. But there is so much else to consider when you think about. Okay, well the use cases where it doesn't make sense just commercially for you to invest in humans to be doing something right either speaking to someone over the phone or engaging with the customer. There's so much sort of beneath the ice. If you think about Call center is the tip of the iceberg. Underneath that, underneath the water, there's this huge remainder of the iceberg where voice AI can add so much to a customer experience. And I think we're going to get there pretty quickly where everyone's playing with AI personally.

51:58 Damian Naughton: Yet I think even just going beyond basic Q and A still has a way to go. But regardless, AI for basic Q&A and AI for agents, if you're a little bit progressive, that is going to continue to proliferate around individuals who are using it for personal life. I mentioned Michael Caine, our butler that's on the fridge. Very soon it will be normal to have your own AI assistant that you can speak to, that not only gives you advice and proactively recommends things, but can go and actually take action with your permission, with the right guardrails, of course. And that action will often be speaking or connecting with a brand or an organization to potentially go and buy something or make a change to a flight.

52:47 Damian Naughton: And on the other end of that is sometimes a human, but also more and more so will be an AI agent as well. And like I'm not talking about anything too futuristic that will happen. It's a matter of how quickly that happens. But that's the experience that companies need to prepare for.

53:10 Georgie Healy: On that there are so many head of AI now at enterprise like this didn't exist this role a few years ago. You are the spokesperson for everything AI related. What would you say to those heads of AI at whatever enterprise company and how would you recommend they consider voice AI for their business? I know I'm being very broad here.

53:36 Damian Naughton: Well, I would expect this head of AI to be far more technically versed on AI and know exactly how to deploy than me. But I will always come at it from a business lens and a business point of view. I think the critical thing about a head of AI or however AI is deployed within an organization is it's a fundamental part of the organization. And I've just remembered the second part of that question you asked me before. Right. So we'll come back to. It needs to be a fundamental part of the organization and it needs to. Your organization needs to be structured in a way where it's not just off to the side. I think that's really, really critical. And as an organization, which is partly answering your previous question, like a salesforce, which I think has done a good job at doing this, which is really identifying early on that if you don't fundamentally try to build, rebuild your organization from the ground up to be genuinely AI first and an agentic company, then you're going to be left behind.

54:36 Damian Naughton: So I would look at it to the head of AI very much from a business lens because the AI part of it is a bit of a misnomer. I'd be thinking about as the organization at C level, as the board. What are the business drivers that are going to take us from here to here in the next five years. Then we look at, okay, well how are we going to achieve that? You just simply cannot. No longer can you throw an army of people at the problem. That has always been really the way to you either acquire a new business to get into a new line or you hire more AES to bring to market or you hire a different. That's typically been the approach. We can no longer do that.

55:23 Damian Naughton: Right. So it is. How do we. How can we fundamentally transform the business? Number one, so we're AI first, but secondly, what do we want to achieve as an organization and how can AI power that? How can AI drive that? I would strongly urge that it is led by the business. You have business technology and maybe AI, Head of AI may be in between there. If it's led by technology. And the technology organization is a fantastic organization that has a lot of value to the company. But if it's not led by business, then you could get safety and security and guardrails, which at very important, don't get me wrong, but might override a business impact and a business outcome. That means you get left behind.

56:09 Georgie Healy: And even that change management piece, like if. If it's. If they're in a silo or if they're not given autonomy to make change. I do feel for, you know, nice role title, but you don't have the full support of the business sometimes, which is hard.

56:23 Damian Naughton: Yeah. And it's horses for courses. Right. There's some organizations where they do have like that head of AI type of role. Plays a really integral part to the organization that is well connected at every part of the organization is genuinely driving change and transformation with AI. Right. There's others that it won't be the case. So it's just about getting that balance right.

56:44 Georgie Healy: Fully agree. Love how much time you've spent as an executive to see that, mate. Are you ready for the spicy part of the interview? The rapid fire?

56:54 Damian Naughton: Absolutely.

56:54 Georgie Healy: Yeah. I feel like you're. I feel like you're warmed up now.

56:57 Damian Naughton: Yep. Ready to go, Damien.

56:59 Georgie Healy: Podcasting is my one job. You guys have very realistic conversations on the platform that I can't tell the difference between real humans and those. Should I be looking for a new job?

57:11 Damian Naughton: No. I'm a big believer in the craft.

57:14 Georgie Healy: Okay.

57:14 Damian Naughton: The craft matters and this is where the craft applies. So, no, not for now. Ask me in 10 years.

57:19 Georgie Healy: Again, ask you in two years if you're still hiring. Is there any. Anything about the Aussie market that we undersell ourselves on? I was really mean before about, like this inability to take on failure and be okay with that. But what are we. What are we better than we think we are at?

57:37 Damian Naughton: I think in general, we have a lot of amazing technology here and startups. I think we need to be louder and prouder. I think human nature in Australia is to be like Humble and keep things under wraps. I think sometimes we need to do this, do the opposite.

57:50 Georgie Healy: Agree. Is Tall Poppy syndrome maybe holding us back, do you think?

57:56 Damian Naughton: Especially in technology, in society in general? 100%. I think it's a bit of a scourge on society, to be honest.

58:04 Georgie Healy: Agree. I'm over it. So over it. What would you say to people that, you know, you've, you've had your career in Sydney and an incredible career at the top companies. What, what if I said, oh, you should have spent that time in the us? Do you think that's true? Or the UK or somewhere else.

58:21 Damian Naughton: I firstly encourage anyone to travel overseas and experience that as far as like starting a company and I mean you don't have to physically be there from the start. I think at a certain point of time there needs to be an expansion into those markets. But as an individual you don't necessarily need to make that hop. I think you can make it work today without having to physically relocate.

58:44 Georgie Healy: It's surprising how controversial that opinion is, but I have been hearing it more and more from successful people in business and startups and the like that I'm well traveled. I don't know why I need to physically relocate. Would you agree with that?

59:00 Damian Naughton: Again, it depends on the look, really. It depends on the, on the circumstance really. But I think you, you can, it's been proven you can have a successful Australian business and Australian tech companies starting here and staying here. You know, look at, look at Cliff and Mel, look at Atlassian. Clearly there needs to be a stake in the ground in the, in the US at some point and in Europe. But how that happens and how you, I guess massage that can be different ways of doing that. Right. You don't have to move there.

59:31 Georgie Healy: Love higher, slow fire, quick is a common rhetoric. Kind of wish I took that on too much stuff ago myself. What are you looking for in this hiring phase and how you don't have much time? How are you going to get the best talent?

59:47 Damian Naughton: So I answered a little bit of this before of like what we look for. I don't think there's a hard and fast of this is exactly like we've got a playbook of how we hire of course but we're looking for all the things I mentioned before and you can make pretty fast decisions. There's a technical like element that you need to pass as well for most roles. But yeah, I think almost within, for me, within the first meeting I would say that 90% of the time I can pick whether someone is going to get to the last stage.

60:17 Georgie Healy: Fascinating.

60:19 Damian Naughton: Yeah.

60:19 Georgie Healy: Is there any personal traits or anything they say that you're like either no way or I think they're onto something. Or is it a gut check?

60:33 Damian Naughton: I shouldn't say it's a gut check. Right. But there's a big, let's be honest. The reality is when you meet with people and you have a conversation with them and you look at their experience and you, you, they're ticking these boxes that I mentioned before, I would say within the first 15 minutes of meeting with them, you can tell whether this person is going to make it to the final stage. Not necessarily whether you will hire them, but whether they can make it to the final stage.

60:55 Georgie Healy: Fascinating. Yep. Last question. Which popular enterprise company may fail if they don't adopt AI voice or otherwise?

61:05 Damian Naughton: Oh, geez. Well, that's pretty tough to answer to throw a company under the bus knowing as well whether we're launching into region. We probably want to speak to them. But I'm going to say, I'm going to cheat a little bit and say give you an industry, the BPO industry. So if, if you are not, what's BPO Business process outsourcing.

61:27 Georgie Healy: I don't know what that is.

61:30 Damian Naughton: That's okay. That could be the call center example.

61:32 Georgie Healy: Okay.

61:33 Damian Naughton: That I mentioned before is, is just one example of that. It's the concept of outsourcing business processes.

61:39 Georgie Healy: Yeah.

61:40 Damian Naughton: To an external organization. So this is an obvious one. So I'm cheating a little bit by saying this. But if you're not fundamentally translated, transforming your business to be AI first and voice AI first, frankly, then you won't survive. I think the other one that falls into that bucket as well, but that's adjacent is even the consulting and VC world like that is turning upside down as well because the typical way of doing business is being challenged.

62:10 Georgie Healy: I agree. And anyone that's seen Devil Wears Prada too, we'll be seeing this play out in real life, which is fascinating.

62:17 Damian Naughton: I'm not one of those people.

62:18 Georgie Healy: So it's your homework.

62:20 Damian Naughton: Yes. Okay, I'll put that on tonight.

62:21 Georgie Healy: Damien, this has been such a pleasure, such an honest chat. Thank you for answering even the spicier questions. I really appreciate it. How do people follow you? How do people find the roles? Any shout outs for the end of the interview?

62:34 Damian Naughton: Yeah, well, I'm not a massive social media person so there's only one place to follow me, which is LinkedIn. But yeah, as I mentioned before, we are hiring at the moment. We're looking at, we are looking for the best of the best talent, so we're hiring at the moment. We've got lots of roles open. You can follow me on LinkedIn and anyone who has an interest in Voice AI, be it at a large enterprise or otherwise, would love to have a conversation.

62:56 Georgie Healy: Thank you so much.

62:57 Damian Naughton: Thank you, Georgie,

63:01 Georgie Healy: thank you so much for listening to In the Blink of AI. If you want to go deeper on anything we've spoken about today I write a weekly substack called Attention Is All I Need. Yes, it's hilarious. It's a pun and essentially I go into AI rants, tech news, events I'm going to and more. It's bite sized and I hear it's awesome. The link is in the show notes below.