One of the problems I’ve encountered with voice modes in AI is working out what to use them for. Quite often I end up using ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode for things that would honestly be quicker to type, instead of going through the motions of talking to my computer or phone. However, if you have a specific task in mind, like, say, math tutoring, then having a conversation becomes a much more practical way of using an AI voice mode.
ElevenLabs recently launched its new Conversational AI agents, which work in very much the same way as ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode or Gemini Live – you talk to the AI and it answers back in a free-flowing conversation style that’s very much like talking to a human being – but they’re orientated around specific tasks.
The default agents that ElevenLabs gives you to start with are focused on math tutoring, a customer support agent, and a video game character. You can also create your own agent from scratch to do exactly what you want.
The poetry of numbers
Albert Einstein said that pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas, and since it’s a kind of poetry, we can talk about it as easy as writing it down, in theory at least. I have to say I was a bit skeptical of the idea that I could improve my math by having a conversation with an AI, however, I have got to say, I’m impressed with Matilda, the default math agent provided by ElevenLabs.
My son has been studying similar shapes in math class recently, and how to use the scaling factors to determine missing line lengths between similar shapes, so I asked Matilda what she knew about it. Within a few seconds, she’d picked some examples and was working me through how to calculate a missing scaling factor between similar shapes, all without having to write a single thing on a piece of paper.
Just like with ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode, you can interrupt Matilda too, so you don’t have to wait for her to finish speaking to say something else.
But what about learning something very visual, like graphs? Matilda didn’t seem bothered by the lack of graph paper on hand and immediately started talking me through the formula for working out the gradient of a line based on two x,y points.
How to get started
What’s great about ElevenLabs AI agents are that you can try them for free. Create a free account and you get 10,000 credits a month, which at 500 credits a minute gives you 20 minutes of free math tutoring. You can upgrade to the Starter tier for $5 a month (all pricing is in USD), which gives you an hour, or the next tier, Creator, takes that up to 200 minutes a month for $22, with a 50% discount on your first month.
Go to ElevenLabs and create an account. Once you’ve logged in, from the dashboard, you need to click on Agents in the left-hand column and choose Create Agent. You’ll see a choice between Blank Template, Support agent, Math tutor, and Video game character. Choose Math tutor and click on ‘Create agent’. Now you can customize your agent, choosing their voice, first message, and customizing their colors. When you’re ready click the black ‘Test AI agent’ button to begin your chat.
You might be wondering if you could just do all this in ChatGPT, well, you could, but the ElevenLabs math tutor is completely focused on teaching you math, so it’s a much more direct approach, and ChatGPT has traditionally been a bit poor at math. OpenAI claims the most recent ChatGPT o1 model is much better at math, however, so you might like to give that a try too.
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