Make your own Toy Story

Welcome back to the Leaderboard. ICYMI: we're talking about some of our favorite products of 2024. In today's issue, we've got Runway's mind-blowing animation engine, a tool to turn any document into audio, and Adobe's AI podcast enhancer. Let's dive in.

Runway Act-One: Generate expressive character performances with AI.

Runway Act-One is the AI company’s latest addition to its generative video suite, enabling expressive character performances across different genres by using both video and audio as inputs. Watching the demo, it’s definitely impressive—if I were Pixar, I’d be pretty excited. Still, with how saturated the market is, I don’t feel the same sense of wonder as I used to. Maybe I’m just getting a little desensitized to AI. Anyone else?

Projects by ElevenLabs: Structure, edit and generate long-form audio with precision.

Projects is ElevenLabs new end-to-end workflow that lets you upload very long documents and turn them into audio. Essentially, it gives you everything you need to create high-quality audiobooks on demand in minds — precise control over editing fragments, access to ElevenLab’s extensive voice library (including an AI clone of your own voice, if you’ve made one), and rendering across dozens of languages. There are lots of obvious winners here, like self-published authors and indie filmmakers, but I’ll be curious to see what other use cases emerge. Personalized educational podcasts based on textbooks, audio journals, and interactive VR storytelling environments are now all within easy reach.

Adobe Podcast Enhance: AI to make spoken audio sound professional

This is such a smart use of AI. Podcasts are an incredible medium, and it’s common to see them evolve over time, improving audio quality as they grow—sometimes with the help of professional editors. This tool lowers the barrier to producing higher-quality content, making it easier for creators to put out polished episodes without needing a big budget or fancy equipment. Sure, it’s not going to replace a full professional setup, but it makes good sound more accessible—and even works for guest audio, which is a huge bonus for shows with remote interviews.