Comparison
Tell Mel puts an AI on the phone with your parent. Lived puts you in the room with them. Both capture stories — but only one of them captures a conversation with someone they love.
Tell Mel uses an AI voice to hold phone conversations with your parent and turns those conversations into written memoir chapters.
Your parent calls the service or gets a call from it. The AI on the other end asks questions in a natural voice, listens to answers, and remembers what was said across calls so it can follow up later. Over a few conversations, the system generates written memoir chapters. Pricing ranges from $99 to $229 depending on the tier.
Tell Mel is genuinely clever technology. The AI is good at holding a conversation. But here is the thing: the person at the other end of the phone is software.
Lived is a cinematic video interview platform. You sit down with someone you love, Lived guides the conversation, and we edit the video into a beautiful 8 to 12 minute documentary film.
The whole experience takes one afternoon. Your parent is not talking to an AI. They are talking to you. You hold the phone. Thoughtful questions appear on your screen — you read them aloud. Lived handles the pacing and the editing behind the scenes so the experience feels calm and unhurried, but your parent never sees the software. They just hear you.
Lived is $79, one-time.
| Lived | Tell Mel | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Cinematic documentary film (8–12 min) | Written memoir chapters |
| Format | Video | Text |
| Who asks the questions? | You — someone they love | An AI voice on the phone |
| Storyteller is talking to… | A person they love | Software |
| Time commitment | One afternoon | A few calls over weeks |
| Done in the same room? | Yes | No — phone only |
| Price | $79 one-time | $99 – $229 |
| Visual record | Full video — face, voice, pauses | No — text only |
Tell Mel is honest about what it is: AI having a conversation with your parent. If you want written memoir chapters without having to be part of the process, it fits. But the whole point of recording your parent's stories is that the person asking matters.
When your mom says "I never told you about the summer I went to stay with my grandmother" — that only comes out when she is talking to someone who knows her. It does not come out for an AI voice she has never met.
The real gift of a conversation is not the transcript at the end. It is the hour your parent spent feeling seen by someone who loves them. That is what Tell Mel cannot give. That is exactly what Lived is built for.
Unlike Tell Mel, Lived captures video, not text. Unlike Tell Mel, the questions are asked by someone in the room. And unlike Tell Mel, the output is a film you can watch together — not chapters saved in a document.
Lived is not hands-off. You have to show up. You have to spend an afternoon. If you cannot do that, Tell Mel or Storii can work without you. But if you can — even once — the thing you get from being there is the thing AI cannot make for you.
Tell Mel is a service that uses an AI voice to hold phone conversations with your parent. The AI asks questions, listens, remembers what was said in earlier calls, and follows up. Over a few calls, it generates written memoir chapters based on what was said. Pricing ranges from $99 to $229.
Tell Mel is a technically impressive AI — the phone conversation can feel natural. But your parent is talking to software, not to a person who loves them. That is the fundamental difference. Lived is built on the idea that the person asking matters as much as the questions. The irreplaceable thing is the feeling of being heard by someone who cares.
Tell Mel ranges from $99 to $229 depending on tier. Lived is $79 one-time. For around the same money or less, Lived produces a cinematic film instead of a written memoir, with your loved one in the room doing the asking.
Tell Mel produces written memoir chapters — chapters of text based on what your parent said to the AI. Not a film. Not a book by default. Lived produces an 8 to 12 minute professionally edited documentary film.
Lived handles the questions, pacing, and editing behind the scenes so the experience feels calm and unhurried — but your parent is talking to you, not to software. The storyteller hears a person they love asking the questions. That is the core of how Lived works.
Give someone you love the chance to share theirs.
Give the gift of a story $79, one-time. No subscription.