Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with the Chief Executive Officer of ElevenLabs, Mati Staniszewski, at Maximos Mansion, and subsequently attended the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Greek Government and the company, which is among the global pioneers in the development of artificial intelligence in the field of voice technology.
During the meeting, they discussed the main areas of cooperation, with a focus on the use of ElevenLabs technology on the Gov.gr portal, in tourism, and in the preservation of Greece’s local dialects and idioms.
As for Gov.gr, the goal is to enhance digitized services with voice-activated features, particularly those services that are widely used by citizens, thereby facilitating equal access and service for all users. In a second phase, the possibility of a voice interface will be explored, which will allow users to give voice commands or ask questions verbally.
As for tourism, ElevenLabs’ technology is expected to be integrated into the VisitGreece portal, to help provide information and guided tours to visitors at museums and archaeological sites, and to help promote lesser-known destinations.
With regard to preserving our country’s linguistic diversity, a pilot digital library of local accents and dialects will be created in collaboration with the Athena Research Center and the Institute of Language and Speech Processing. In the first phase, the natural speech of speakers of distinct dialects will be recorded to serve as the basis for creating a digital voice.
During the discussion, views were also exchanged on the potential use of voice models in civil protection, an area in which Greece already has the tried-and-tested early warning system “112”, as well as on how to better connect ancient Greek philosophy with the modern public.
The meeting was also attended, on behalf of the government, by the Minister of Digital Governance Dimitris Papastergiou, and the Minister of Tourism Olga Kefalogianni.
At the beginning of the meeting, the Prime Minister and the Chief Executive Officer of Eleven Labs had the following dialogue:
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: I’m really happy to welcome you, Mati, today and your team to Athens and really happy about the agreement that we will sign. Usually when we think about artificial intelligence, we usually discuss through the lens of models, you know, compute infrastructure. And of course, we’re doing lots of things in that area. But at the end of the day, artificial intelligence has the ability to really improve the way people live, communicate, access opportunities. And that’s why I think this partnership that we are inaugurating today is so important.
We are very interested in building an accessible, human-centered digital state. I think we’ve made tremendous progress over the past years. We are implementing one of the most ambitious digital transformation strategies of any European country. We provide more than 2,200 digital services to our citizens. But of course, we used to think of Gov.gr as a screen interface where people would type in whatever their requests were, but of course AI is opening up completely new opportunities to interact with the state in a completely conversational, multilingual, voice-enabled and at the end of the day much more intuitive manner.
And I’m fascinated with the opportunities that we can explore to integrate this technology in our digital services. In particular for older people, people with disabilities, Greeks abroad, I think this will make a huge difference.
But of course, I’m also very happy that we’re extending this partnership beyond government services. In tourism, and we’ve discussed this frequently with the Minister, these technologies can vastly help people experience what Greece has to offer in entirely new ways and making our history, our culture, our destinations available in every language.
And I’m also fascinated by the third aspect of this partnership, which relates to the preservation of our very rich linguistic heritage of various dialects that are still spoken in Greece. Unfortunately, some of them we risk losing, and the ability of AI to capture this linguistic wealth and to keep it alive for future generations is truly fascinating.
So I’m really happy about this partnership. We should not approach AI with fear and passivity. We are open to establish partnerships with innovative firms to help them test their models in a national context and this is exactly the philosophy that’s incorporated in this MOU that we will sign. And I’m really proud that we will build this partnership together.
So again, welcome to Greece and happy about this journey that is just beginning.
Mati Staniszewski: Thank you, Prime Minister. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you to your team’s leadership across AI and the digital services. I’m very excited about the MOU and, as you said, the three pillars of bringing it to the digital services across 2,200 parts of the government and across amplifying tourism and preserving the languages.
Greece has been a big part of ElevenLabs from the beginning. We have a Greek leading our research engineering, we have a Greek leading our deployment efforts, and some of the earliest enterprise customers were from Greece.
So even more excited for what Greece is doing and having a pleasure to be a part of the voice layer of that ambition.
