unpacking artificial intelligence and its impact on the voiceover industry
Digital voice assistants are everywhere these days. From Siri on our iPhones, to Cortana on our Windows PCs, and everything in between, we are surrounded by digital companions that can assist us with many daily tasks.
“Hey Siri, call my wife.”
”Hey Google, turn on Trevor’s TV.”
”Hey Cortana, what’s the forecast for this evening?”
These are a few real world examples of phrases I say pretty much every day. If you told me that life would be like this 20 years ago, I would have called you insane. Back then, my cell phone had a green background and lighter green text on it, and all it really did was make phone calls. Now I can tell my digital assistant to order pizza, and it shows up on my doorstep. I can ask for directions to any destination in the world, and my phone will give me the optimal route with an estimated arrival time. It will even tell me what the traffic is like on the way. My friends, we live in the future.
Conveniences aside, AI has irrevocably changed the way the world works. Entire industries have been completely transformed by this technology. What’s more, when such transformative change takes place, AI sometimes replaces a human counterpart completely. Factory floors that once housed human workers are now overrun with robots performing the same tasks, albeit with higher level of precision and productivity. This mostly works out well for companies using the tech, allowing them to turn out a higher volume of products without sacrificing quality. However, when it comes to creative endeavors like voiceover, the discussion is a bit different.
where a.i. meets voiceover
There are a variety of companies offering artificial, computer-generated voiceovers to customers. Companies like Descript, LOVO.ai, Murf.ai, Azure Text to Speech, and more all provide customers with voices to choose from, and allow them to process their text into audio files for their projects. For some, this may sound like a dream; you can instantly get access to audio content, derived from your own written content, and keep moving with your production instead of waiting for someone to voice your project.
However, for the professional voice actor, this probably sounds like a nightmare. Jobs that would once arrive in your inbox may now be headed toward one of these AI voiceover companies. Instead of a human voice narrating an IVR system for a company, a YouTube video, or an audiobook, you have a digital caricature doing it instead. Yuck.
The current evolution of the technology, in my opinion, is lacking a lot of the nuance and emotion that a real human voice can provide. If someone wants to use an AI voice for a job, so be it, but I think the performance will lack the proper feeling and emotional context. That being said, this tech is advancing quite rapidly. It’s completely within the realm of possibility that AI voices will eventually be able to express complex emotions with the proper input. Once that happens, what happens to us?
talent will play a major role in your success
The voice actors that will weather the storm of AI will be the ones that have acting chops; the ones with experience and talent that cannot be replicated fully by AI. There will always be a market for talented voice actors, especially with public facing content that will be seen and heard by many. If you’re worried about the longevity of your business after reading this, my advice would be to get coaching and perhaps some acting lessons. Become a master of your craft, so that the work that remains is still within your grasp.
consider your niche
If we think about AI voiceover logically, there are a few genres of work that make sense for the tech:
Telephony: having a clear and professional voice for a company phone system is a requirement in this day and age. Where AI voiceover might have an advantage is the ability to quickly change voicemail and on-hold messaging on the fly for holidays, changes in operating hours, business conditions, and more. It can also facilitate multi-lingual customer interactions by providing a voice for a customers chosen language.
Corporate Narration: when training employees, you can use a synthetic voice to reduce the overhead costs of producing training videos, internal messaging, or other corporate content. This allows companies to allocate budgets for creative work elsewhere, while still getting something that is serviceable. It also saves a good chunk of time because production becomes instantaneous.
Podcasts: companies like Descript have completely changed the podcast editing workflow. Using their AI voice tech, you can edit your podcast audio as if you were editing a word document. So, this particular use case doesn’t completely replace someone’s voice. Instead, it supplements the voice by using machine learning to remove unwanted phrases, fill in gaps with new content, and more. It’s pretty cool stuff, honestly.
the cons of using synthetic voices, for producers
There are a variety of reasons why using synthetic or AI voices might be problematic for producers:
The tech just isn’t quite there yet. The voices you’ll use for productions still lack the proper emotion, inflection, and sometimes even pronunciation of key phrases. These errors can sometimes be jarring, and listeners will definitely be able to detect a robotic sound in the voice.
Ethics play a role in the discussion, too. How far should we take this tech? Once it becomes indistinguishable from a real human voice, what kind of problems could this tech create? Will we be able to trust audio clips in the news any more? How will we prove something was actually said by a particular person, instead of artificially generated by some AI voice? Furthermore, how do we prevent voices from being stolen and used for purposes that the original human never intended to endorse or participate in?
human voices are still preferable
With all this in mind, I think we can all agree that using a real, human voice is preferable to using AI voice tech. The quality of the content you receive will undoubtedly be much higher, and it will have all the nuance and emotion that real human voices can provide. By using real voices, you ensure that your content sounds and feels real to your listeners. This authenticity is all too important when creating content, especially if you’re trying to connect with a younger audience.
With that in mind, what do you think about AI voice tech? Send me a message and let me know. I’d love to hear from you.
