Complete Guide to Voice AI: Use Cases & Major Players
Is the ambient interface ready yet? We ask each decade, and finally LLMs with AI agents seem to be approaching a turning point. 🔊
Good morning,
When we think about the future of the human interface an ambient computing comes to mind popularized by such movies as Her, in 2013. This implies a universal personal assistant in the form of agentic AI chatbots that are completely personalized to us. I believe the rise of Voice AI experienced by “advanced voice mode” of current leaders best illustrates how close we are to this point.
In June, 2025 Madrona did an interesting exploration of the Emerging AI Agent Infrastructure of Voice AI. The way we connect with the world via voice-AI is about to shift. I asked
of Why Try AI, to look more into the consumer AI aspect of Voice.Voice AI is having its moment in 2025 on the AI startup front as well. In the past few months, we’ve seen a surge of Indian startups leveraging voice AI in powerful ways, according to Lightspeed India.
“Latency: down from >1s to <300ms (human level). Anything above 1.5s is highly noticeable and considered socially awkward
Expressiveness: new STT and TTS models which can capture emotion, pitch, tone in ways that make the output indistinguishable from humans VAD & interruption handling: real-time turn-taking, background noise filtering, and multi-speaker context, all of which are important components to deliver high quality conversational experiences” - Rohil Bagga, Lightspeed India
A little over a decade ago, the movie Her introduced us to Samantha, an AI-powered operating system whose human companion falls in love with her through the sound of her voice. Twelve (almost thirteen) years later in the real world AI companionship is a real thing for millions of young people and Gen AI users.
The societal debate surrounding AI companions isn’t just about their effects on humans but how corporations entertain and retain users. With Google Gemini gaining on ChatGPT in 2025, OpenAI’s ChatGPT will soon allow ‘erotica’ for adults in major policy shift. The move could represent a major shift in OpenAI’s policy, which currently bans NSFW content even as services such as Character AI are still incredibly immersive. Current LLMs designed to be sycophantic (agreeable and manipulative) will only get and become more persuasive. As such, be cautious with how you interact with AI. (AI Psychosis is a real thing).
Advanced Voice Mode Gets Human Level in 2026
Among the seven leading AI products, they all have Voice-AI implications many with very functional voice mode (and voice search) options:
As conversational AI is embedded in more devices and institutions, we’ll be taking for granted all of this soon enough. This has profound meaning of how we will be relating with whatever the future of AI, chatbots and BigAI “Super apps” become and software that’s increasingly personalized to us.
With latency now at human levels, models that can mirror tone and emotion, and interruption handling that makes conversations natural - voice AI is moving fast from promise to reality.
A new stack of Agentic Voice AI agents is coming:
Daniel’s Why Try AI newsletter focuses on practical guides to AI for non-techies. He demystifies generative AI for the average person via humorous, beginner-friendly takes without hype. In addition to large language models, Daniel loves experimenting with creative GenAI tools like image generation, AI video, AI music platforms, and so on. For general interest AI enthusiasts, it should be one of your go-to sources in my opinion:
Why Try AI
Hype-free, hands-on AI for non-techies.
Let’s Explore AI Tools
Her is a selection of
’s recent posts that caught my eye that you might find of value:14 Niche AI Tools You Should Try
I Tested Three Different AI “Study” Modes
Here Are My Go-To AI Tools
I Fed My Voice to 10 Free AI Voice Cloners. Only One Nailed It.
Commercial voice applications are about to hit a tipping point
I believe we’ve very close to the sort of general purpose utility Voice AI that was once thought of as the holy grail of ambient computing and science fiction even 20 years ago.
Daniel’s complete guide to Voice AI follows with links to many of the most important tools, startups and products around Voice AI. The list is easy to read with dozens of the key players.
It’s more like a launching pad to further exploration than a comprehensive guide, but important if Voice AI is something you want to go deeper into. You will find the best:
Note takers & transcription services
Conversational AI agents
The 8 leading chatbot voice modes
Speech generation & voice cloning
Voice infrastructure (APIs / SDKs), and more.
The voice AI interface is posed to make more progress in the next three years 2026-2029, than in the previous thirty years. But which are the key real world use cases in 2025 and who are the leaders today?
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