AIVA for Voice
Talk to AIVA.It talks back.
AIVA listens and speaks — free with the Mac’s built-in voices, or richer with OpenAI or ElevenLabs. Five activation modes, natural interruption, and follow-up listening make it feel like a conversation, not a command line.
What AIVA can do
Concrete help with Voice.
Speak with the voice you choose
Free Apple voices need no key. Add OpenAI (Cloud or Local) or ElevenLabs (Local) for richer character — switch providers any time.
Start a conversation five ways
Wake word, push-to-talk, the composer mic button, automatic follow-up, and talk-over interruption. Mix them to fit your environment.
Interrupt naturally
Start talking while AIVA is speaking and it stops mid-sentence to listen — useful when it’s heading the wrong way or you’ve thought of more.
Stream for responsiveness
Speech can start playing while it’s still being generated, so replies feel fast and the back-and-forth stays natural.
Example prompts
Just say it in plain language.
Hey Claire — what’s my first meeting today?
(push-to-talk) Draft a reply to Sam and read it back to me.
Turn on wake word and follow-up listening.
Use the ElevenLabs voice from now on.
Stop — actually, make it more formal.
Switch to push-to-talk; I’m heading into a meeting.
Actions available
The tools AIVA actually has.
Speak
Apple, OpenAI, or ElevenLabs voices.
Listen
Wake word, push-to-talk, or mic button.
Follow up
Keep listening for a few seconds after speaking.
Interrupt
Talk over AIVA to redirect it mid-sentence.
Stream
Begin playback before audio finishes generating.
Permission model
You stay in control of every consequential action.
Read-only work happens silently. Anything that changes the world waits for your approval — and destructive actions always ask prominently.
Common workflows
How people put it to work.
Always-on assistant
Wake word + follow-up + interruption turns AIVA into a hands-free companion you can talk to across the day.
Meeting-safe mode
Switch to push-to-talk in noisy rooms or meetings so AIVA only listens while you hold the key.
Voice and text together
Speak when convenient, type when you can’t — both work simultaneously, no mode switch required.
Without your approval, AIVA won’t
No surprises.
These never happen on their own. AIVA drafts and asks; you decide.
- Send, post, or create anything triggered by a voice command — the action still asks
- Take destructive actions by voice without a prominent confirmation
Local-first notes
Your data, on your machine.
Apple voices run entirely on-device and free; no cloud key required.
API keys for OpenAI/ElevenLabs are stored encrypted locally.
There’s no always-on recording to a server — listening modes are yours to enable and disable.
Related workflows
AIVA works better together.
Core feature
AIVA for Screen Awareness
Ask AIVA to look at your screen and it captures a single screenshot, reads it with a vision model, and helps — the error, the article, the PDF, the email you’re reading. Only on demand, only after you grant permission, never on a timer.
Core feature
AIVA for Memory
A normal chatbot forgets when you close the tab. AIVA keeps four kinds of memory — durable facts, workflow recipes, live context, and behavior rules — so it knows you, gets faster over time, and never makes you repeat yourself.
The app
AIVA for Mac
AIVA is a native Mac app, not a browser tab. It runs locally on 127.0.0.1, keeps its data on your machine, and stays on in the background — remembering, following through, and only surfacing what’s genuinely useful.
Get started
Let AIVA handle Voice for you.
Create your account on the web — it carries straight into the Mac app.