ElevenLabs Tests Voice AI in Pop-Up Store with AI Shopkeepers & Coffee Robots
ElevenLabs opened a pop-up store in New York to demonstrate its voice AI technology, featuring interactive experiences like AI shopkeepers and a coffee robot. The event highlighted potential applications such as AI dubbing and translation for broadcasters and TV stations. An employee noted that the founder encourages them to 'show, not tell' the capabilities of their audio-based, digital product.
Key Takeaways
- The pop-up featured an AI shopkeeper that negotiated prices with customers, accepting reasoned arguments but pushing back on anger.
- A robot barista, Adam, served cold brew but struggled with adding almond milk, requiring human intervention.
- Audiobook demos allowed visitors to hear "Pride and Prejudice" narrated by AI voices styled after figures like Albert Einstein and Michael Caine.
- A phone booth integration demonstrated an AI agent discussing industry topics, such as TV stations using ElevenLabs for broadcast translation.
Why It Matters
ElevenLabs' physical pop-up highlights the current state of voice AI integration in real-world, interactive scenarios, moving beyond purely digital applications. This strategic move aims to engage new customer segments, including broadcasters and TV stations, by demonstrating practical benefits like AI dubbing and translation. The varying performance of the AI shopkeeper and robot barista underscores the ongoing development challenges in creating fully autonomous and intuitive AI experiences. Future advancements will likely focus on improving AI's contextual understanding, reducing latency, and handling edge cases to achieve more seamless human-AI interactions in commercial and B2B settings.
Additional Context
The ElevenLabs pop-up during New York Tech Week has generated discussion around the practical deployment of voice AI. A Semafor report from June 2026, "AI customer service is not ready for prime time," highlighted challenges with the coffee robot at the event, noting vocal recognition issues and significant lag attributed to network problems. Similarly, the AI shopkeeper sometimes struggled to correctly process non-standard spellings of names. These observations suggest that while AI voices are becoming more human-like, the broader user experience in real-world scenarios still faces hurdles regarding recognition accuracy and responsiveness in varied environments. RoboPhil (June 2026) emphasized that ElevenLabs' move into physical AI, giving its "voice a body" via robots, significantly expands its addressable market beyond software subscriptions, projecting the global physical AI market to reach $15.28 billion by 2032. This indicates a growing industry focus on leveraging AI in tangible, interactive formats, despite current operational limitations.
Read full article at businessinsider.com
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