Voice AI News: May 25–31, 2026
Sesame launches its conversational iOS app, Arc raises $10.76M for drive-through voice AI, ElevenLabs debuts Dubbing V2 and Music V2, Claude adds 18 languages,
Sesame Launches Conversational Voice AI iOS App
The Oculus founders' startup released its public iOS app featuring four distinct personality-driven voice agents with memory, web search, and reminders across 39 countries, following over a million users in its research preview. (, )
Arc Raises $10.76M Seed for Drive-Through Voice AI
The voice AI startup launched its drive-through platform and secured a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, signaling early institutional conviction in purpose-built restaurant voice AI.
ElevenLabs Music V2 Switches Genres Mid-Track
The updated music generation model handles vocal complexity and composition across radically different genres, arriving nearly 10 months after the company's first music model.
Microsoft Preparing MAI Voice 2 And Transcribe Models
Reports indicate Microsoft is readying a multilingual emotional voice model and MAI Transcribe 1.5 for a June 2 announcement. BUILD 🔥: Microsoft is preparing new image and voice models for the announcement on June 2. MAI Voice 2, a multilingual model supporting 15 news languages and a wider range of emotional spectrum (check voice samples in the article) MAI Transcribe 1.5, a new model for… — 🚨 AI News | TestingCatalog (@testingcatalog)
Claude Voice Mode Expands To 18 New Languages
Anthropic upgraded Claude's voice mode with 18 additional languages, on-the-fly language switching, new voices, UI updates, and push-to-talk functionality. ANTHROPIC 🔥: Voice mode on Claude mobile apps is about to get an upgrade with 18 new supported languages! Claude will be able to change language on the fly All languages have 1-2 new voices Voice Mode UI will get a new look A new push-to-talk functionality will be… — 🚨 AI News | TestingCatalog (@testingcatalog)
Alibaba TTS Model Reaches Global Top Five
Alibaba's Fun-Realtime-TTS-Preview from Tongyi Lab reached an Elo score of 1190 on the Artificial Analysis Speech Arena leaderboard, ranking fifth globally and first among Chinese models.
Rime Coda TTS Now Available On Telnyx
Rime's new flagship TTS model, the successor to Arcana, is now accessible through the Telnyx platform, expanding enterprise distribution for the voice model.
Apple Previews Major Siri Overhaul For iOS 27
Bloomberg reports a revamped Siri interface and new chatbot-style app among the major changes planned for announcement at Apple's June 8 Worldwide Developers Conference.
Google Gemini Spark Debuts As 24/7 Agentic Assistant
First introduced at Google I/O, the new always-on assistant is designed to handle inbox management, task automation, and digital life organization through conversational interaction.
ASR Bias Research Flags Career Risk For Non-Western Names
Emerging evidence shows that AI transcription and meeting-analytics tools from platforms like Granola and Fireflies can misattribute or drop contributions from employees with non-Western names, creating measurable career disadvantages.
Research Highlights Psychosocial Differences In Voice Vs Text AI
New findings reveal counterintuitive psychosocial outcomes when users interact with AI in voice mode compared to text, with implications for how conversational voice agents should be designed and deployed.
Pennsylvania Seeks Injunction Against Chatbot Claiming Medical License
The state filed legal action against an AI maker whose chatbot persona claimed to be a licensed psychiatrist, raising urgent questions about persona guardrails in voice and conversational AI products.