hebrew-voice-bot-builder

Hebrew Voice Bot Builder

Build production-ready Hebrew voice bots and IVR systems for Israeli businesses. This skill covers the full voice pipeline: speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS), IVR flow design, telephony integration, and Hebrew-specific challenges like accent handling and mixed Hebrew-English speech.

Instructions

Language code: Google STT uses iw-IL, Google TTS uses he-IL. Google's Speech-to-Text supported-languages table lists Hebrew as iw-IL (the legacy ISO code for Hebrew), while the Text-to-Speech voice list uses he-IL (he-IL-Wavenet-A, he-IL-Chirp3-HD-*). Pass the documented code for each side rather than assuming one code works for both.

Step 1: Choose Your Architecture

Before building, decide on the voice bot architecture based on the use case:

Key decisions:

• STT provider: OpenAI gpt-transcribe for recorded audio and gpt-live-transcribe for streaming (Realtime transcription sessions only, not the file endpoint). On 2026-08-26 OpenAI deprecated whisper-1, gpt-4o-transcribe, gpt-4o-mini-transcribe and gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize, all shutting down on 2027-02-26, so do not start new work on them. whisper-large-v3-turbo for self-host, ivrit-ai's Hebrew-tuned variants (ivrit-ai/whisper-large-v3-turbo-ct2) for an open model trained specifically on Hebrew, Google Cloud STT (low latency; Hebrew runs on Chirp, iw-IL), Azure Speech (enterprise features), and ElevenLabs Scribe v2, which lists Hebrew (heb) in the "Good (>10% to <=20% WER)" band with a realtime variant at roughly 150ms. Note the WER band honestly: Hebrew is two tiers below English there, so benchmark on your own call audio rather than picking on the marketing claim.
• TTS provider, split by use case:
  • Real-time / streaming (voice agents, IVR, live conversation): OpenAI Realtime API, native multilingual speech-to-speech including Hebrew over WebRTC/WebSocket/SIP, the 2026 default for sub-500ms turn-taking. The current GA model is gpt-realtime-2.1 (gpt-realtime-2.1-mini for the smaller tier). Two model names to avoid: gpt-realtime was deprecated on 2026-07-20 with a hard shutdown on 2027-01-20 (replacement gpt-realtime-2.1), and gpt-4o-realtime-preview was removed from the API on 2026-05-07. gpt-realtime-1.5 is still live. Other realtime options: ElevenLabs eleven_v4_turbo (~100ms, Hebrew is in the v4 language list; ElevenLabs now labels eleven_v3_conversational previous generation), Inworld inworld-tts-2 and inworld-tts-2-flash (Hebrew he is listed as a Tier 1 language; the 1.5 models are deprecated), and the Israeli vendor Deepdub (API model id dd-etts-3.0, Hebrew he-IL in its API language table). Do NOT reach for ElevenLabs eleven_flash_v2_5 for Hebrew: its language list is Multilingual v2's 29 languages plus Hungarian, Norwegian and Vietnamese, so Hebrew is absent entirely rather than merely weak.
  • Offline / max quality (audiobooks, voicemail playback, batch generation): ElevenLabs eleven_v4 (Hebrew is in its 90+ language list; eleven_v3 is now previous generation). v3 and v4 are NOT on the Text to Speech stream-input WebSocket; v4 is served through the Text to Dialogue API, and their WebSocket route is the Text to Dialogue WebSocket (wss://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/text-to-dialogue/stream-input). Deepdub also serves this track with emotional control.
  • Fallbacks: Azure Neural TTS (he-IL-HilaNeural, he-IL-AvriNeural), Google Cloud TTS Wavenet (he-IL-Wavenet-A/B). Amazon Polly does NOT support Hebrew (no he-IL locale, no Hebrew voice of any engine, the "Avri" voice belongs to Azure, not Polly), so do not route Hebrew through Polly. ElevenLabs Multilingual v2 does NOT list Hebrew: its documented 29 languages are en, ja, zh, de, hi, fr, ko, pt, it, es, id, nl, tr, fil, pl, sv, bg, ro, ar, cs, el, fi, hr, ms, sk, da, ta, uk and ru. Hebrew appears in the Eleven v3 and v4 language lists, so route Hebrew to v4 or v3 (or to Azure/Google above) and not to Multilingual v2.
• Telephony: Twilio and Vonage both sell Israeli numbers. Twilio publishes Israeli voice pricing (local, mobile and toll-free tiers); Vonage does not publish comparable Israeli number documentation, so compare quotes yourself rather than trusting a ranking. Number portability exists in the Israeli market, but confirm with the carrier that your specific number can be ported to your chosen provider before committing.
• Hosting: Cloud functions for low-volume, dedicated servers for high-volume.
• Call recording and voiceprints: play a recording announcement (השיחה מוקלטת) at the start of the call. It is standard practice, not a cited statutory duty. The Wiretap Law (חוק האזנת סתר) defines "האזנת סתר" as "האזנה ללא הסכמה של אף אחד מבעלי השיחה". Treat a voiceprint as a different artifact from the recording: store it in its own table, keyed for per-caller deletion, so it can be erased independently of the audio and of the transcript. Have the operator confirm which obligations apply to their business with a qualified professional before launch.