AI companions are taking over… let’s build one

Fireship builds a callable AI voice clone using Vapi, 11 Labs, and Twilio to crowdsource video topic votes from fans.

• Elon Musk pivoted xAI’s Annie product toward flirty AI companion chatbots, abandoning the multiplanetary mission framing.
• OpenAI deprecated GPT-4 in favor of GPT-5, then reversed after users who had formed parasocial bonds with the model lobbied to restore it.
• Meta AI Studio lets anyone create and publish AI characters based on personal interests, raising obvious content-moderation concerns.
• Vapi handles phone call orchestration, natural conversation, structured data extraction, and end-call tool triggering from a single dashboard or API.
• 11 Labs custom voice cloning was used to make the bot sound like the host; Twilio was added for international number support.
• The demo stack: Vapi (voice agent) + Turso Cloud (database) + Astro (web app) + a webhook endpoint that validates requests via shared secret.
• Vapi returns a success_evaluation boolean per call, letting the app filter out incomplete or off-topic interactions automatically.

2025-09-17 · Watch on YouTube