ElevenLabs, the US$22 billion voice company, told Mumbrella on 2 October that it can clone an Australian voice from 10 seconds of audio, and that its Australian and New Zealand team has grown from three people to 22 since April. The pitch to local businesses is simple: give your brand its own voice, in ads and on the phone. The short answer to whether you should is yes for a stock or licensed voice on a well-scoped phone agent, and only with care for a clone of a real person, because the same capability is now being used to move money out of banks.

We design and build AI voice agents for Australian businesses, and the decision we help clients make first is not which voice sounds best. It is which calls the agent should take, what it is allowed to do, and what it must say about itself. If you want that worked through for your own phone line, you can book a meeting and we will map it with you.

What ElevenLabs is selling Australian businesses this week

Mumbrella’s interview with Damian Naughton, who became the company’s ANZ general manager in April after leading Slack in the region, sets out the local push. ElevenLabs says it has more than 70 Australian and New Zealand customers on enterprise plans, a voice marketplace with thousands of local voices, a new v4 model it describes as its most human-like, and a turn-taking model aimed at contact centres.

The headline is Naughton’s view on disclosure. Asked whether it matters if listeners know a voice is synthetic, he said: “I personally don’t think it matters.” Mumbrella also notes that the Interactive Advertising Bureau framework does not automatically require disclosure for an authorised synthetic voice in standard advertising.

That may hold for a radio spot. It is weaker on a phone line, where a customer is handing over personal information and Australian regulators have already said what they expect.

The 10-second claim, and what the vendor’s own documentation says

Ten seconds is the marketing number. ElevenLabs’ professional voice cloning documentation recommends 1 to 2 minutes of good audio for an instant clone, at least 30 minutes for a professional clone, and ideally close to three hours. Professional cloning is not available on the Free or Starter plans; Creator and Pro include one slot.

The more useful line in those documents is about consent. ElevenLabs says you can only create a professional clone of your own voice, and that even with their consent you cannot clone someone else’s. If a staff member or a voice artist wants their voice on your phone line, they create and verify the clone in their own account and share it with yours.

For a business, that answers a question owners rarely ask until it is too late: who owns the voice? If the face of your business leaves, their verified clone sits in their account, not yours. Put a written licence in place before you build anything around a real person’s voice, covering where it can be used, for how long, and what happens when the relationship ends.

What a voiced phone agent actually costs to run

Running costs are lower and more predictable than most owners expect. ElevenLabs publishes its agent pricing in US dollars: Pro is US$99 a month with 1,238 call minutes and 20 concurrent calls, Scale is US$299 with 3,738 minutes and 30 concurrent calls, and Business is US$990 with 12,375 minutes and 40. Extra minutes cost US$0.08. Model (LLM) usage is billed separately on top, depending on the model you pick.

Divide each plan price by its included minutes and you get US$0.08 every time. The tiers do not buy cheaper minutes. They buy concurrency, which is the number of callers the agent can talk to at once. If you exceed it, burst pricing lets you run up to three times the limit at US$0.16 a minute.

Here is a worked example from those published prices. Take a business answering 1,500 calls a month at an average of three minutes: 4,500 minutes, or 75 hours of talk time.

• On Pro: US$99 plus 3,262 extra minutes at US$0.08 is US$359.96.
• On Scale: US$299 plus 762 extra minutes at US$0.08 is also US$359.96.
• If you bring your own Australian number through Twilio, its published rate to receive calls on a local number is US$0.01 a minute plus US$3 a month, adding US$48.

That is roughly US$408 a month before model fees, and the plan choice should be made on your busiest hour, not your monthly total. Twenty simultaneous callers is a lot for a clinic and very few for a utility during an outage.

The platform bill is rarely the expensive part. The cost sits in the work around it: connecting the agent to your booking system or CRM so it can actually resolve the call, writing what it may and may not say, handing over to a human cleanly, and testing it against the calls you really get.

The rules that apply the moment the voice makes a call

Two regulators matter most for a business phone agent.

The ACMA, if the agent ever calls out to sell. The ACMA’s telemarketing rules (page updated 2 September 2026) say telemarketing calls may only be made 9am to 8pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 5pm Saturday, never Sunday or on national public holidays. The caller must give their name and their employer’s name, say why they are calling, end the call if asked, and show a caller ID number people can ring back. Calls about an appointment reminder, a product recall or a debt are not telemarketing. Numbers on the Do Not Call Register for 30 days can only be called with consent or by an exempt organisation, so an outbound sales agent needs list-washing built in, not bolted on.

The rules were written for people, but nothing exempts a synthetic caller. Our practical reading: an outbound agent should name the business and say plainly that it is an automated assistant, because “tell you their name” is hard to satisfy honestly with a cloned human voice and an invented first name.

The OAIC, for every call. Its guidance on commercially available AI products says businesses should update privacy policies and notices to explain their AI use, and that public-facing AI tools such as chatbots should be clearly identified as AI to customers. A phone agent is a public-facing AI tool. It also collects personal information on every call, so the transcript, the recording and anything the model infers are covered by the Privacy Act if your business is.

Put those together and the disclosure question answers itself. One sentence at the start of the call (“You’re speaking with the automated assistant for [business name]”) costs nothing, keeps you aligned with the OAIC, and removes the risk of a customer feeling tricked later.

Cloned voices are now a fraud tool, so design for that first

On 26 September, Gulf News, citing Reuters, reported that Fideuram, the private banking arm of Intesa Sanpaolo, transferred about EUR95 million overseas after its chairman received a WhatsApp message appearing to come from the group CEO, followed by a call in which AI was used to replicate a senior lawyer’s voice. Around EUR36 million was still missing when the report was published.

The lesson for an Australian business is not “never use synthetic voices”. It is that a familiar voice is no longer proof of identity, and a business that puts its owner’s cloned voice on every call is training staff and customers to trust that voice.

Three controls we would put in place before any voice goes live:

• No payment, bank-detail change or password reset is ever approved on the strength of a voice alone, cloned or real. Confirm on a second channel you already hold.
• The phone agent cannot move money or change account details. It books, answers, qualifies and hands over. Anything with financial consequence goes to a person.
• Audio of your leaders is treated as sensitive. If you do clone a voice, keep it in a verified account under a written licence, and log where it is used.

These are the same principles behind our secure AI system development work: limit what the AI can do, assume someone will try to misuse it, and check every action that matters.

Stock voice, licensed voice or your own: how to choose

For most businesses we recommend a good stock or marketplace voice on the phone line and keeping clones for marketing, where a known voice actually earns its keep. A stock voice can be swapped tomorrow and belongs to nobody on your staff.

A licensed voice artist makes sense when the brand voice is a real asset, such as a long-running radio campaign, and you want the phone line to match. The licence matters more than the technology.

Cloning the owner makes sense in a narrow case: a founder-led business where callers genuinely expect to hear that person, and where the owner has accepted the fraud controls above. Even then, the agent should still say it is automated.

Whichever you choose, the same agent logic applies. Voice is the last 10 per cent of the job. If the agent cannot see your calendar, read the customer’s history or pass a warm handover, a beautiful voice will only make the failure more noticeable. Text follow-ups are often the better channel for confirmations and reminders, which is why many projects pair the phone agent with AI SMS automation.

What we do, how pricing works and how fast it moves

Digital One Agency builds custom AI voice and SMS agents connected to the systems you already run. We start with your real call data: which calls come in, at what hours, and which ones a machine can resolve end to end. From that we set the scope (inbound only, outbound reminders, sales calls with Do Not Call washing), the disclosure script, the handover rules and the fraud limits, and then quote the build. Running costs are the platform and telephony fees above, which you can check against the vendor’s own price list.

Why not do it yourself on a self-serve platform? You can, and for a single after-hours message line you probably should. Bring us in when the agent needs to read and write to your booking, CRM or job system, when it makes outbound calls that ACMA rules apply to, or when the calls carry personal or financial information.

If you are deciding whether a voice agent belongs on your phone line at all, start with the free AI audit, which looks at where AI would save time in your business and where it would add risk. If you already know you want one, book a meeting with Digital One Agency. Bring a month of call logs if you have them, and we will come back with which calls the agent should take, the monthly running cost on your own volumes, and a quote for the build.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal to use an AI voice on my business phone line in Australia?

Yes. There is no general ban on synthetic voices. If the agent makes sales calls, the ACMA telemarketing rules on calling hours, identification, caller ID and the Do Not Call Register apply, and the OAIC expects public-facing AI tools to be clearly identified as AI to customers.

Do I have to tell callers they are speaking to AI?

The OAIC's guidance says businesses should ensure public-facing AI tools are clearly identified as such to customers, and update privacy policies to explain their AI use. A single sentence at the start of the call meets that expectation and costs nothing, so we recommend it for every agent.

How much does an AI voice agent cost to run per month?

On ElevenLabs' published pricing, call minutes work out at US$0.08 each across the Pro, Scale and Business plans, with model fees billed on top. A business handling 4,500 minutes a month would pay about US$360 in platform fees plus roughly US$48 if it uses a Twilio local number. The build and integration work is a separate, one-off cost.

Can I clone a staff member's voice for our phone agent?

Not directly on ElevenLabs. Its documentation says you can only create a professional clone of your own voice, even with the other person's consent. The staff member creates and verifies the clone in their own account and shares it, so put a written licence in place covering use and what happens if they leave.

Can a cloned voice be used to scam my business?

Yes. Reuters reported in September that a cloned lawyer's voice helped trick an Italian private bank into transferring about EUR95 million. Never approve payments or account changes on a voice alone, and keep any phone agent unable to move money.