ElevenLabs Builds a Complete Creative OS
The one thing you need to know in AI today | AI Ready CMO
You probably have too many tools.
Most teams I talk to are running seven, eight, sometimes twelve different AI subscriptions. One for voice. One for video. One for images. Another for dubbing. Each with its own credit system, its own quirks, its own billing headache. And, most importantly, every time you need to move between them, your workflow breaks into pieces.
ElevenLabs just made a serious play to fix that.
This week, they launched full image and video generation inside their Creative Platform, and while the feature itself isn’t groundbreaking (it’s using external models like Sora 2 Pro, Veo 3.1, Nano Banana, and Flux), the integration absolutely is.
You can now clone your voice, generate an avatar, create a video of that avatar speaking in your voice, upscale it to 4K, and export it, all without leaving the same browser window.
This is the tool consolidation thesis playing out in real time. ElevenLabs started as a text-to-speech company. Then they added speech-to-text. Then music and sound effects. Then dubbing. Then agents. Each expansion felt incremental until you step back and realize they’ve quietly built a complete creative operating system.The new image and video capabilities are less about adding another feature and more about completing the loop: turning scattered tools into a unified production environment.
The workflow advantages are obvious once you use it. Need a presenter-style video for a product launch? Generate the visual with your choice of models (Sora 2 Pro for cinematic quality, Kling 2.5 for speed, Veo 3.1 for narrative audio). Add your cloned voice or generate a new one. Apply automated lip-sync. Upscale. Done. No exports, no imports, no subscriptions to manage, no wondering if your credits will work across platforms.
What actually makes this professional-grade is the visual reference system.You’re not just prompting into the void and hoping for the best. Set a Start Frame—your product shot, your brand hero image, whatever needs to open the video. Want to control where it ends up? Set an End Frame. Need the whole thing to stay on-brand? Drag in Image References to guide the style. Your existing assets, previous generations, anything in your library—it all works as visual anchors.
This is the difference between a demo tool and something you’d actually use in production. Generic video generation is suitable for experimentation, but reference-controlled generation is how you build campaigns that genuinely appear cohesive.
The pricing actually makes sense, too. On the Creator plan ($22/month), a Sora 2 Pro video costs under a dollar. A Flux-generated image runs about 9 cents. Those are worst-case monthly prices without discounts. Suppose you’re on a team or running an agency. In that case, the Pro plan ($82.50/month, annually) makes everything more affordable and provides the volume needed for production work, not just experimentation.
What’s interesting here isn’t that ElevenLabs built better image or video models—they didn’t. It’s because they built better infrastructure.
Instead of forcing you to choose between Sora, Veo, Seedream, or Kling by subscribing to each separately, they give you access to all of them in one place. The model becomes a parameter you adjust for the task, not a platform you commit to. Adobe announced the same philosophy at MAX last month.
The pattern is clear: the future isn’t about owning the best AI, it’s about orchestrating access to the right AI at the right moment.
So if you’re still managing a dozen AI subscriptions and duct-taping workflows together, this is worth looking at. Not because ElevenLabs has some magical new technology, but because they’ve figured out what actually matters: keeping you in flow.
This issue of the AI Ready CMO is sponsored by ElevenLabs but they did not have any influence over the editorial content.
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