Are Voice AI Pipeline Platforms a Race to the Bottom?

andrewoodleyjr.com

15 points·andrewoodleyjr··5 comments

Much of the hype around "AI" is based on it allowing a cost-driven race to the bottom. Some fraction of AI will be used for genuinely better products. Much of it will be used to provide a merely tolerable product with nearly zero marginal cost of producing and supplying it. Rather like software in general, actually.

Solid point. But Twilio is an example where race to the bottom doesn't apply.

I know plenty of people who use Twilio and hate the platform however they don't leave. Alternatives like Vonage and Telynx have similar offers with better pricing however people don't leave Twilio. If anything people apply pressure to Twilio to give similar pricing and that's about it.

The Voice AI products feel more like Lyft vs Uber, which platform will I use today to get a ride and they are easily "swappable".

Dumb question perhaps but what specifically are the multiple “VoiceAI” platforms being referred to here?

I purposely avoided mentioning any but these are platforms that allow businesses/developers to build voice ai products on top of it.

I'll limit my response to YC companies only - platform examples are Vapi.ai (the best in my opinion), Bland.ai, Toma.so, Retell AI, Infer.so, Marr Labs, Elto.ai

Voice examples are - playht, elevenlabs, amazon polly

Elevenlabs is a popular one

Reply on news.ycombinator.com