ElevenLabs Unveils Its Fastest, Most Expressive Voice AI Models Yet

ElevenLabs introduced its most advanced voice AI models, Eleven v4 and Eleven v4 Turbo, focusing on emotional speech, improved voice cloning, and quicker response times. In a September 2026 X post, ElevenLabs described these models as "the fastest and most emotive voice models yet."

Benchmark tests revealed Eleven v4 topped the Artificial Analysis Provider Voice Arena, outperforming competitors like Cartesia Sonic 3.6, Inworld TTS-2, Google Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS, and Google Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS. Head-to-head preference tests confirmed Eleven v4's superiority in expressiveness and naturalness.

Eleven v4 Turbo, a faster variant, generates speech in approximately 100ms, excluding external factors. This is a significant improvement over Eleven v3 Conversational's 280ms. While Eleven Flash v2.5 remains the swiftest model at 75ms, Eleven v4 Turbo offers a balance between speed and emotive delivery.

Designed for high-quality content creation, Eleven v4 enables expressive speech analysis, context-aware tone, pacing, emotion, and character control. Users can add inline audio tags like [laughing], [whispering], and [shouting] for precise delivery. Both Eleven v4 and v4 Turbo support over 90 languages, multi-speaker dialogue, and high-fidelity voice cloning, including Professional Voice Clones for extended content.

Eleven v4 Turbo optimizes speed for real-time applications such as AI assistants, customer support, and interactive characters. It supports WebSocket streaming, allowing audio generation to commence before the entire text input is complete. Both models are accessible via ElevenAgents, ElevenCreative, and ElevenAPI.