ElevenLabs has released 11ai (alpha), a voice-first assistant designed to demonstrate the capabilities of its conversational AI platform. Unlike many current voice tools, which primarily respond to queries, 11ai is intended to interact with external services and initiate simple actions through user-authorized integrations.

The assistant is powered by the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a standardized approach for connecting AI agents to external APIs. This architecture allows 11ai to perform tasks across tools like Slack, Linear, Perplexity, and Notion, depending on configuration and permissions.

Voice Interaction with Task Execution in Mind

While most voice assistants excel at handling general knowledge queries or basic commands, they often fall short when it comes to meaningful task execution. 11ai attempts to close this gap by coordinating voice input with tool-specific actions — such as:

1. Daily Planning: “Plan my day and add my priority tasks to Linear.”
2. Customer Research: “Use Perplexity to research our prospect and summarize their recent funding.”
3. Project Management: “Search Linear for API-related tickets and create a follow-up task.”
4. Team Communication: “Summarize unread Slack messages in the engineering channel.”
5. These interactions depend on tool integration and user consent. The assistant does not operate independently but relies on structured connections provided via MCP and configured by the user.

Integration via MCP

11ai’s support for MCP means it can interface with external systems through a unified protocol. The current alpha version includes default integrations with:

1. Perplexity for research with real-time data
2. Linear for issue and project tracking
3. Slack for team communication
4. Notion for task and knowledge management
5. Users with internal or custom software can also connect 11ai to their own MCP servers, allowing more tailored workflow integrations.
6. Each connection is permission-based. The assistant is restricted to only the actions the user has explicitly approved during setup.

Available Now in Alpha

11ai is currently available as an alpha-stage proof of concept. ElevenLabs is offering free access during this period to gather user feedback and understand how voice-first interaction can support productivity.

To try 11ai:

1. Visit 11.ai to sign up

2. Choose a voice from the library or create a custom voice clone

3. Connect your tools, such as Google Calendar, Slack, or Perplexity

4. Initiate a voice session, starting with common workflows like task planning or summarizing information

ElevenLabs is particularly interested in hearing which integrations are most useful, what additional services should be supported, and how the voice interaction experience compares to traditional interfaces.

11ai serves as a technical demonstration of what voice interfaces could enable when combined with structured tool integration. It’s not a full-fledged assistant yet — but it offers a look into how natural language interaction might evolve to support everyday workflows, beyond answering questions.