Meet Nova Sonic: Amazon's voice AI that actually listens

The first voice assistant wasn't Siri.

It was Shoebox by IBM… in 1961.

It understood 16 spoken words and 10 digits.

On hardware the size of a fridge.

Now we whisper to our watches.

In today’s post:

• Amazon Nova Sonic: New AI voice model

• Amazon Nova Reel 1.1: New AI video generator

• ElevenLabs MCP is now available

• Passing the Turing test? what’s next?

• Trending AI tools + AI giveaway

What’s Trending Today

Voice AI

Talking to Machines Doesn’t Have to Be Weird Anymore

Ever tried talking to a bot on the phone and ended up yelling “TALK TO A HUMAN”? Yeah, same.

That weird robotic voice with awkward pauses might be on its way out.

Amazon just dropped something called Nova Sonic, and it's kind of wild. Here's what it does:

• It understands and speaks back like a real human conversation. No switching between a bunch of models anymore.

• It listens for your tone, adjusts how it replies based on how you're saying things—not just what you're saying.

• It’s super fast and doesn’t feel like you’re waiting for it to “think.”

• It handles interruptions like a real person pauses, listens, continues. No more awkward resets.

• Developers can plug it into apps using a new streaming API. That means live back-and-forth voice chats with your app, instantly.

• It even plays nice with customer data, using tools to pull up relevant info during chats.

• Works with American and British English for now, but more languages are coming.

Here’s what I think:

This is less about making bots “smarter” and more about making them less annoying. If this keeps moving forward, we might finally get to a place where AI on the phone doesn’t feel like smashing your head against a digital wall.

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Video AI

Amazon’s Video AI Just Leveled Up

It used to be: if you wanted to make a video, you needed cameras, lights, editing software, and lots of time.

Now? You might just need a sentence.

Amazon’s latest update to its AI video tool, Nova Reel, makes it possible to create two-minute videos all AI-generated with nothing but a prompt.

Here’s what’s new:

• You can write up to 4,000 characters, and Nova Reel 1.1 will turn that into a video with multiple six-second scenes.

• The style stays consistent throughout, which has been tough for other models.

• There’s a new feature called Multishot Manual where you feed it an image plus a short prompt, and it builds the scene around it, shot by shot (up to 20 of them).

• You can only use Nova Reel through AWS services like Bedrock — and you do need to request access (but it’s automatically granted).

• As with many AI tools, people are asking: Where did the training data come from? Amazon hasn’t said.

• But if someone tries to sue you for using its AI to make a video, Amazon says it has your back.

Here’s what I think:

Everyone’s trying to become the Hollywood of AI and Amazon just grabbed a megaphone. Whether you’re building tools, making content, or just watching this all unfold, it’s clear: text-to-video is growing up fast.

BREAKTHROUGH

Your AI Can Now Make a Call and Order Pizza

We’ve officially entered the “AI makes phone calls for you” era. No joke.

ElevenLabs just rolled out its MCP server a tool that gives AI models like Claude or Cursor full access to their entire audio platform, just by sending a prompt.

Here’s what that unlocks:

• Text to Speech: Turn any content into natural-sounding audio. Think audiobooks, voiceovers, or even bedtime stories.

• Speech to Text: Need transcripts? It can convert audio or video into clean, readable text.

• Voice Designer: Build your own custom AI voice from scratch.

• Conversational AI: Create voice agents that talk — and even make outbound phone calls (yes, including ordering a pizza).

It’s like giving your AI assistant a voice, ears, and the ability to pick up the phone.

Here’s what I think:

This isn’t just about reading text aloud or transcribing calls. It’s about building AI that can do things in the real world, over real phone lines. The line between “app” and “assistant” just got even blurrier.

What happened?

GPT-4.5 Fooled People Into Thinking It Was Human. Should We Be Impressed?

You’ve probably heard it by now: ChatGPT just “passed” the Turing test.

That sounds like a big deal. But…is it?

Here’s what really happened:

• Researchers tested four AI models by making people chat with two agents at once one human, one AI and guess who’s who.

• GPT-4.5 fooled people 73% of the time, making it the most convincing of the bunch.

• Another model, LLaMa-3.1, tricked folks 56% of the time.

• The old-school ELIZA and newer GPT-4o barely moved the needle 23% and 21%, respectively.

The test lasted five minutes. Conversations happened over a simple chat interface, like texting. Based on that short interaction, people had to guess which “person” was actually a chatbot.

But here’s the kicker:

• The Turing test doesn’t measure actual thinking just whether something acts human.

• Critics say it’s not enough. Behavior ≠ intelligence.

• The researchers themselves admit it shows “substitutability,” not true smarts.

• The test also had murky variables: things like how each model was “personified” weren’t fully clear.

Here’s what I think:

It’s cool that AI can hold a convincing convo. But intelligence isn’t just playing the part it’s about understanding, reasoning, and adapting over time. GPT-4.5 might sound human…but it still doesn’t think like one.

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