Video Tools Weekly: AI Voices, Photo Grading, and Tone-Directed Speech
This week's biggest updates span AI voice control, professional photo editing, and intelligent social publishing across the video production ecosystem.
Descript: Tone Tags for ElevenLabs V3 AI Speakers
Descript has introduced inline Tone Tags, letting creators embed directional cues—such as whispers, laughs, pauses, or custom emotional descriptions—directly into AI speech scripts when using ElevenLabs V3 speakers. Inserting a tone tag triggers automatic regeneration of the surrounding paragraph with the new direction applied.
Why it matters: This gives creators fine-grained expressive control over AI-generated voiceovers without re-recording, dramatically closing the gap between synthetic and human-sounding narration.
DaVinci Resolve: New Photo Page with Hollywood Color Tools
DaVinci Resolve 21 introduces a dedicated Photo page that brings the full node-based color grading pipeline—including primary correction, curves, qualifiers, power windows, and Resolve FX—to still photography. It supports tethered capture from Sony and Canon cameras, LightBox album views, AI IntelliSearch for images, and full Blackmagic Cloud collaboration.
Why it matters: Professional colorists and photographers can now use the same Hollywood-grade tools on stills and video within a single application, eliminating the need to round-trip between separate software.
ElevenLabs: Speech Engine for Custom AI Agents
ElevenLabs launched Speech Engine, a new product that adds real-time voice—including speech-to-text, turn-taking, text-to-speech, and browser playback—to developers' own chat agents or LLMs via a WebSocket connection, while the developer retains full control of the agent logic. An SDK quickstart, agent skill guide, and REST API are all now available.
Why it matters: Developers can now bolt production-quality voice onto any custom AI backend without adopting the fully hosted ElevenAgents platform, making conversational voice interfaces accessible to a much wider range of custom applications.
Sources: ElevenLabs, Adobe, DaVinci Resolve, Descript, OpusClip