Yahoo, a resort chain and a Dutch phone company put AI voices to work

Voice AI is showing up in everyday services. ElevenLabs, a voice AI company, shared how clients including Yahoo, Westgate Resorts and Dutch phone company KPN are using its tools. The uses range from a talking answer tool to a hotel front-desk agent to voicemail help for small businesses.

What these companies built

Yahoo added real-time voice conversation to Yahoo Scout, its AI answer tool, which used to be text only. Scout is now out of beta after more than 3 billion answers. Yahoo says building voice on its own would have been far slower.

Westgate Resorts built a voice agent named Sarah to handle common front-desk questions. It learned from 8,000 real support call transcripts, so its answers fit the questions guests actually ask. Sarah launched at the 2,100-room Orlando resort. Two more resorts are next.

The Dutch phone company example

KPN, the largest telecom provider in the Netherlands, launched Mobiel AI with ElevenLabs. It gives small business owners voicemail transcription, call summaries with suggested next steps, and smart call routing.

Dutch is hard for voice AI because of long compound words and strong regional accents. Details like a postcode or date of birth are easy to get wrong. After the two companies fine-tuned the model on Dutch data, identity-check accuracy rose from roughly 50% to 90%.

Other uses worth knowing

• Doppel uses AI voices to run safe, controlled phone phishing tests that train staff to spot fake calls.
• Pocket, a wearable AI notetaker, has transcribed more than 2.5 million hours of audio with ElevenLabs.
• Twilio, which helps developers add calls and texts to apps, is also named as a client.

What it means for you

Expect to hear more AI voices when you call a business, book a stay or ask a question. Small businesses can use the same kind of tools for voicemail and call handling. The Doppel example is a reminder that attackers use AI voices too, so a convincing caller is not proof of a real person.

These results come from ElevenLabs, which is describing its own customers. The material does not say how guests or callers rate these services.