POSITIVE PRACTICAL VOice overs...IN A JIFF!
AI. Oh My!
Hi. I’m Barb and I am a real human. I do real human things like walk our dog, do the grocery shopping and laundry, and yes, occasionally go overboard on the sweets…I do have a wicked sweet tooth! But, I’m also full time Voice Talent. I record projects, I audition, keep up with my contacts and make new ones, and keep up with my socials. I like to work quickly. I hate making people wait for work so most of the time I deliver within 24 hours - and many times pickups within the hour.
Now today, a lot of people are tempted by AI. I get it: free or cheap VO that lets
you move on to something else is enticing. I’m here to tell you that all that glitters
is not gold.
On the surface, AI seems adequate. It will give you the words in your document.
No more. No less. My big problem with AI is that it has no soul… no personality...
no creativity.
When you need extra warmth on that last line, I’m thinking about that special
moment I shared with my dad. When you need a bit of sass, I’m thinking about
that snarky comment I made at dinner. And when you need intrigue and
enthusiasm, I’m thinking about when I taught my dog a new trick and everything just clicked. But, AI can’t pull from those places
to add emphasis, emotion and interest. AI doesn't understand cheerfulness, serenity, comedy or tragedy…severely limiting your storytelling ability. It can’t use pace to slow down when something’s really important, and speed up to convey excitement or make a
long list interesting.
Everyone likes having choices. Hello, Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors! I like to give more than one read of a script where I can. I work really hard to make interesting choices with “pre-life”. What’s pre-life? A technique where an actor explores and invents
what may have come before the first line of copy. It changes based on the scene you set and who you're talking to. There’s a big difference between talking to a 20 year old and a 6 year old! Pre-life, and countless other techniques we voice actors employ add extra dimension and interest to your script.
Do you remember a time when you really got pulled into a story? Bet you there was a pause somewhere up front. Pauses draw people in, and you want that in your voice performance. AI can’t compute that. And forget natural rhythm. AI robots will deliver text at an even, measured pace…or maybe just a little bit fast to hide its flaws. If you listen to “pre-recorded” podcasts, you get me.
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One of the most important things you lose with AI, is your Brand Voice. Campaigns shift slightly depending on the usage or life of the campaign. A great way to maintain that is with live direction and it’s one of my favorite things about Voice Over. Don’t you get a rush from collaborating with a team to achieve a goal? I do! When you get what you need, and the voice actor on the other end knows they’ve nailed what you're looking for, it's a feeling like no other! Most importantly that’s how relationships are built.
Now, you likely place a lot of value on trust. You select your doctor and mechanic because you trust them. Heck, you even have a preferred grocery store because you trust their produce will be the freshest. People are skeptics. If they get a whiff of something disingenuous, you can kiss trust goodbye. And that includes fake AI voice.
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God forbid you're teaching people anything. Listening to an AI voice rhythmically drone on, repeatedly missing inflection points like so much white noise, will cause them to tune out or immediately forget what they’ve just learned. A study by eLearning Industry noted that AI narrated modules often result in lower time-on-task and reduced retention scores. And engagement can drop by up to 20-30% within the first 10 minutes. Whereas, a warm, clear, and appropriately paced voice over, studies showed held attention longer and encouraged repeat use,
particularly in corporate and K-12 scenarios.
(SweetRush. (2024). Human Voiceover: The L&D Advantage for Learner Engagement. Retrieved from
Then there’s the contextual misfires. If you’re working on a technical project or anything with terminology, you know what dicey territory that can be! Watch out for those acronyms that make up so much of our daily lives, and don’t get me started on drug names. AI will flub names, places, technical terminology and tricky acronyms. And those in the know would tell you, it’d be much easier if they simply had to tell a voice artist how to do it once. Tell me how to say it, and you won’t have to repeat yourself.
But let's not stop there. If there is a pickup, be prepared to repeat all the other cues you typed into the code to get the AI to repeat their performance. All the tweaking and manually fiddling with settings yields inconsistent results. Savvy voice actors know how to replace just a bit of text without impacting the whole piece, potentially undoing so many things you liked.
AI has its place. It can be really helpful behind the scenes where it supports the creative process…generating ideas, formatting scripts, brainstorming. But, if you really want to engage, entertain, teach..you can’t replace the human touch. So I’ll be here, standing by to help you bring any project to life…and have a little fun along the way!