AI – Doom? or Boom! – Wonders of the Voice

How To Set Voice Over Rates

March 21, 2023

Let’s face it AI is more than just a “Distruptor” – It’s come in with a BANG! Pulled the carpet from under our feet and made us go, “DANG!”…. but is it really “Kaput!” or can it be a possible “Ka-Ching!”? Is it Doom? or can we Boom? This is a nail biting question on every creative’s mind.

Let’s examine what’s been happening here….

Some Possible Positives…

The way we create has changed overnight with unbelievable tools and generative engines that can increase productivity exponentially.
The IoT is truly at our fingertips….at our command or in this case our nuanced query – Heck! Open AI has taken “Ask and you shall receive” to a whole new level! If you’ve tried it out you’ll feel like you have your own personal Genie in a bottle.
Those who stay open to ride this new wave can learn fast, work smart and stay relevant
The learning curve for most things will be greatly reduced…. things that were known to experts will be available freely for newbies to absorb at the rate of knots!
AI is Levelling up the playing field here like never before
The potential expression of creativity is enormous!

Some Perceived Negatives

Creatives are feeling destabilised and with uncertainty comes a feeling of being lost. It’s not a nice place to be. Quite rattling!
Jobs and designations as we know it have changed or will possibly become redundant
Income slices of those delicious pie charts have virtually been eaten up by AI
With cloning and replication tools we are questioning the ethics and best practices in most industries with the advent of AI – more so in the creative space.
Privacy, Intellectual Property and Brand Uniqueness are being violated, Content identity theft and plagiarism is becoming child’s play – What’s the way forward and how can we put ground rules and governing laws in place so our individual and collective rights are safeguarded in cyberspace?
Will AI make us lazy, reliant and dependent rather than resilient, creative and problem solvers?

The Changing Work Scape

With the gusty winds of change often comes a storm of displacement and chaos. But as in nature, the storm passes and calm is always restored….blue skies and sunny weather where the birds chirp and the bees hum. As they say, this too shall pass.

Like in the past, many new and innovative things were invented by the sheer genius of the human mind… the telephone that connected people across the world, iron and steel ships that floated on water without sinking, that miracle of an airplane that defied gravity and now transports millions around the globe in hours if not minutes…. The camera, the cinema, animation, the radio, the Television that brought entertainment to homes… all this using not even 10% of our human intellectual and creative capacity. Machine learning algorithms are being refined as we speak….getting fed with intelligent human data voluntarily. But at the end of the day it is just that…. a machine with lifeless data.

We are the ones who infuse it with so called “life” – It will continue to lack soul and life’s uniqueness that only Humans are capable of experiencing.

Sure! Graphics are being produced in seconds but they all have that “AI look and feel” – it is the creative artists that can truly make “original art” – There is and will always be value in exclusivity and originality. It’s up to illustrators and graphic artists to upskill and use the tools available to create with vision and passion something never seen before! The possibilities are now endless. The gap between human imagination and creative output is narrowing.

Absolutely! Voice overs are being produced with a click of a button now…. modulated, inflected and articulated with international accents thrown in to the milieu but they too sound more or less the same with that easy to identify “AI Sound” lacking emotional depth and nuance that only a human heart that lives and breathes can bring to life.

MNC clients have already started insisting that I sign an agreement that ensures I do not use any AI voice….protections for cloning my voice are also in place in clauses that safeguard the interest of Artistes.

Yes! Clients and agencies I work with have started using AI. Why wouldn’t they? They get a good idea how long their video is with an AI voice or use it for a pitch to get their end clients to see their marketing vision and while some have started using it for straightforward tutorials or educational content… as soon as there is a proper noun; a tongue twister name of a person or place or a tricky medical or technical term with abbreviations – they seek out a real Human Voice to handle those projects…more so the ones that go public.

I would imagine lower budget projects that the SME or individual wants done is now easily available. But Big Brands that need commercial voice over, Audiobooks that need voice actors to read in that first person voice using voice acting and accents or animated TV serials and feature films that need cartoon characters or real life impersonations aren’t likely to go the AI route. I don’t see those projects being replaced by AI. You need a simple text to speech project done – AI solves for that. You need to connect with your audience heart to heart – AI ain’t gonna cut it! Leading Brands and MNCs will know better than to associate their entities with a cheap, run of the mill AI voice. They’ll want to continue to stand out from the crowd and differentiate their Brand Voice with a REAL human voice – a thinking, feeling, emotive one that understands the human heart and connects to other humans through that shared experience….authenticity and relatability will continue to come at a premium and there will always be an experienced voice talent that offers that premium “conversational voice”. It is trending in the VO industry for a reason.

So What can Voice Talent do?

As voice talent we can differentiate ourselves from the AI bots by our USP – Being Human and Real and being able to use our EQ to take direction not just well but knock it out of the park with our ability to understand and remember how the direction evolved from take1 to take 7 building on the nuances or changing up the emotion within a sentence if required and being able to offer “safety takes” and varying narrative style choices to discerning clients in the creative iterative process. I don’t see AI voices being able to iterate with the precision and instinct of a human voice talent and the advantage of speed in delivery that AI voices might have to begin with will probably be nullified and perhaps even leave clients frustrated as the end output might eventually be unachievable and proved to have been a time waster after all and that will continue to be the reason why clients will eventually throw away the gizmo and seek REAL VO with REAL talent.

We can also start exploring how AI can help us offer different products to our clients expanding our service offerings or perhaps ensure we are fairly compensated with perpetual residual income if some of us choose to allow our voices to be used for AI and utilised over and over again. Evolving with the times, working with AI, reimagining how we work going forward is key to staying relevant and in the VO stratosphere.

Activism to streamline best practices is important

It’s good to know that A-List celebrities are using their network, resources and positions of power to be the spokespersons and early activists for the voice over industry as a whole. You may have heard that when approached Scarlett Johansson turned down Open AI’s offer to license her voice for ‘Sky’ one of their chat bots only to later realise that they had gone ahead and used her likeness to train the chatbot anyway. The resemblance was so striking that her friends brought it to her attention and she proceeded to threaten legal action against them. They claimed they did not use her voice to train the AI chatbot but took down the voice anyway not wanting to risk going up against Scarlett in court. Other artists like Bette Midler and Amitabh Bachan have also filed their own lawsuits. This sets the ball rolling to put regulations and laws in place that protect an artists’ brand identity, going forward, even if we’re behind the scenes, tucked away in our humble studios and no one knows we exist. That is reassuring for us mortals…by no means lesser when it comes to personal rights.

Surprisingly! AI cloning hasn’t spared singers and vocalists too. Justin Beiber, JLo and Drake soundalikes and lookalikes are releasing music videos and even tributes to the Pope that are going viral. Whaaaat?!! Cyberspace is a bit of a mess at the moment. 😅

The way I see it – It’s a new toy to play with. Open AI and Gen-AI have changed the way we work, we play and we create just like the way the internet and later social media changed the way we worked, we played and we created about a couple of decades or more ago. We have adapted, adopted, learnt and regulated. I have no doubt we will do it again.

POV: How things are likely to evolve…

It’s an experimental phase…. a wait and watch game – the launch, the tinkering around, the adoption and our intrinsic adaptability will show us the way forward. Best practices will come into place eventually and we will minimise the risks while proliferating with the all the benefits. It’s an evolving cyberscape…. and we can all play a part for the better for the next gen of artists that join the foray.

Communication is still KING and is here to stay…. It’s the way we Humans connect with each other. The way we communicate may change but the need to communicate is going nowhere!

And NO!! Video DID NOT KILL the Radio star!

I certainly hope that AI will not kill the Human spirit. That is what will always differentiate us. The living, breathing and actually experiencing human spirit – filled with joy and oodles of charm, depths of sorrow and endless creativity and imagination – the same intellectual and imaginative vision that brought AI to life.

I am one of those billions of humans – I was born with an intrinsic sense of hope, enthusiasm and a spirit of adventure – I choose to use AI as a tool to springboard from and enjoy the joy ride! I’m excited to see how much I can do and how fast I can achieve with this brand new personal assistant.

There will always be the good, the bad and the ugly. This is just the way of the world; a realm of co-existence so we can be challenged to push our boundaries and seek to learn and grow while we’re here for short blip in time. I ask… can the created destroy the creator? Nah! I’d like to believe not! Disrupt? Yes, Destroy? No!

It’s all a matter of perspective – your POV – So are you a sceptic who prefers to wallow in the gloom and doom or will you choose to adopt the growth mindset?

I’d love to know what you think. Any comments?

ps: This is a 100% original article. I did not put it through ChatGPT. Just saying. 😄

Noella is an award winning Voice Over Artist, Author and Voice Trainer. She’s been in the VO industry for over 20 years and has lent her voice to global brands. She runs Wonders of the Voice – Voice Acting and Voice Over training sessions for aspiring VO talent. Her in -person classes held in Singapore are 5 Star rated, Skills Future Credit Eligible and been running for a whole decade since 2015. 1000s of happy participants have taken her Beginners Guide and gone on to do her Advanced Guide many of whom gone on to start successful VO careers themselves landing their first paid VO gig through Voice4ads. She has recently launched an online course to so more students can benefit from her expertise across the globe. To avail a limited time only special launch offer of 50% off visit https://courses.wondersofthevoice.com to learn more and sign up.