Drop the mic!

(Humming in the style of the famous Conan O’Brien sound cue)

In the year 2000…

… I was starting out playing with microphones on college radio, and the only robots around were food processors.

In the year 2006…

… I was beginning my voice-over work, and the only robot making news was Sony’s AIBO robot dog.

In the year 2023…

… I did a series of voice-overs for Playmobil where, among several characters, I imitated the robotic voice of the main character, Robert, the Robot.

In the year 2025…

… I practically lost a specific type of voice-over work, e-learning, which clearly went to AI-synthesized voices, spreading everywhere.

In the year 2026…

… I’ve been receiving many voice-over requests where they send me videos with synthesized voice just as a timing reference for the production team, or so they say, but where the client wants a human voice for the final product. And I completely understand why. I start listening to the reference audio and think, “Wow, this isn’t bad at all for a generative AI model robot voice.” But within 10 seconds, I start changing my mind. In the end, the voice is off. It sounds excited during sad parts of the script, speeds up when it should emphasize a phrase, repeats the exact same dynamics over and over… It becomes boring, repetitive, devoid of emotion. It isn’t human, in every sense of the word! And the audience will feel the same way. After all, they are still people.

On the other hand, I have already been invited to sell my voice to ‘ethical’ cloning services, ones that would synthesize my timbre and style with my consent and according to my instructions on how and when they could use “my cloned voice”. For long, simple yet tedious jobs, like reading thousands of names for personalized voice-overs, it might make sense. I wouldn’t have the massive recording effort, I would receive compensation for the use of “my cloned voice”, and the client wouldn’t have to pay a premium rate just for the time I spent in the studio if they had chosen “my human voice”. As of now, I haven’t accepted these kinds of proposals, but I admit I might do so in the future.

In the year 2036…

… Will we have reached and settled into the State of the Art of voice-overs 10 years ago, with the ethical Human-Robot partnership?