Voice AI for Greece

Today, ElevenLabs and the Government of Greece are entering a strategic partnership to bring voice AI to public services, tourism, and the preservation of Greek linguistic heritage. 

Our cofounder Mati Staniszewski and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis marked the partnership at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, with the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Dimitris Papastergiou, Minister of Digital Governance and Artificial Intelligence.

The partnership covers three pillars:

• Digital governance and public services. Exploring the application of voice AI to government call centers and to gov.gr - Greece's single digital portal, which now offers more than 2,200 services - to make government services more accessible, in any language, including for the Greek diaspora and citizens who find it challenging to navigate the internet.
• Tourism. Supporting Greece's digital tourism infrastructure, by exploring how voice AI can expand the reach of the official travel portal Visitgreece.gr, supercharge marketing campaigns with distinctive voices, and power new platforms for mountain, maritime, gastronomic, and wellness tourism.
• Preservation of local dialects and Greek heritage. Helping preserve Greece's rich linguistic heritage, including regional dialects now spoken by only a few hundred people in isolated communities. The teams will start their collaboration with Cretan before adding additional dialects. The Athena Research Center will serve as the local partner to steward this project. 

Discussions about the first projects for each pillar are already underway. This week, ElevenLabs leads met with the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministers of Digital Governance and Tourism, and the Athena Research Center to discuss the action plan to move each pillar forward. 

Speaking on stage at Panathēnea after the MOU signing ceremony, Prime Minister Mitsotakis said:

"Greece was a technological laggard. We made digital transformation of the state our number one priority and delivered a user friendly interface in gov.gr. But this was just the beginning."

"AI can have a transformational impact in government and dramatically increase the productivity of how we deliver services. To use a tech analogy, we’re building a new operating system for Government with a complete rethink of the processes, data management, and level of ambition in our use of technology to deliver public services." 

The MOU comes as our business in Greece is growing. We already serve some of Greece’s largest companies as they seek to transform how they communicate with their customers. Enterprises like Alpha Bank, Sfakianakis Group, and BOX NOW are using ElevenLabs to build voice agents that elevate their customer support and reduce operational costs. And media companies like Kathimerini and Skai TV use our content creation tools to narrate articles and automate radio bulletins. 

Greece joins a growing group of governments using ElevenLabs to make public services more accessible. For example: 

• In Ukraine, ElevenLabs provides the voice layer for the Diia app and powers voice agents for the state employment service. 
• In the Czech Republic, voice agents handle approximately 5,000 calls a day on national benefits and employment hotlines, resolving the majority autonomously. 

The specifics of each pillar will be developed over the coming months in partnership with the Ministry of Digital Governance, the Ministry of Tourism, and the Athena Research Center. We are excited to deepen this collaboration to contribute to a Greek state that meets citizens where they are, in the language they speak, at the moment they need it.