I’ve had clients tell me lately they’re having a tough time convincing their customers to use a human narrator rather than AI and/or text-to-speech voices, the shiny new toy in their production arsenal.
I’ve had clients tell me lately they’re having a tough time convincing their customers to use a human narrator rather than AI and/or text-to-speech voices, the shiny new toy in their production arsenal.
Those same clients are also NOT leveling with their customers that AI is often more expensive, time-consuming, and difficult than hiring a qualified human voice actor.
Here’s an example: when words can be pronounced differently depending on context. For example, “conduct” can be pronounced as it would be for a code of conduct. Alternately, there’s the word's pronunciation when you conduct an orchestra.
An AI or text-to-speech voice will get this wrong almost half the time, requiring time-consuming, manual fixes from a team member.
But those same clients are not divulging this manual-fixes-after-AI-screw-ups issue to their customers. Importantly, they are distorting the true cost of AI by notcharging their clients for the revision time. This is bad business practice. In addition, it materially contributes to many human creatives losing work by propagating the myth of AI “efficiency” in this context.
The result for those clients? Their customers are moving forward with the mistaken impression that AI is “faster,” “more efficient,” and “more cost-effective” than human narration.
As an experienced voice actor, I’m not blind to the fact that there will be many use cases where AI voice is the right tool for the job. For example, in a crisis like the wildfires in Jasper, it might be much more expedient to use a text-to-speech voice for phone lines, messages on websites, etc., with developments occurring so rapidly in real-time.
At the end of the day, though, one of the primary roles of a human voice actor is to infuse emotion, personality, and authenticity into narration, making it more engaging and relatable. AI voices can’t do that. AI hasn’t lived. It can “borrow” and “simulate” experience but will utterly fail to translate that into tangible human-felt emotion.
In simpler terms, an experienced human voice actor "gets it." AI voices can’t “get it” because they don’t care. There’s no human investment in your message. AI voices tend to sound flat and dead just when there should be emphasis.
I know of a middle management-level project manager within a large provincial government agency here in Alberta (Alberta Health Services) who has bluntly stated that they’ll never hire a human voice actor again.
When told a human actor might make concepts easier to digest and positively affect learner retention rates with clear, engaging, and engaged narration, that manager also bluntly stated that they don’t care about learner outcomes. Their obligation is purely regulatory. If the learners don’t take in the training, they say that’s on THEM.
Honestly, if ANY area of learning could use a human touch, it’s narration for Health Services.
Many producers are playing checkers, not chess, when considering the shiny new toy and could be better evaluating the use cases for human voices and skills versus AI or text-to-speech.
I’ve already replaced plenty of text-to-speech voices after a client was charged for the initial development. I’m happy to do it, but I wonder if any thought was given to how that customer experience might have been better if the use case had been properly analyzed and the right choice to use a human narrator had been made, to begin with.