Paul Boucher - Blog #Voice Acting

Automobiles and AI

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 18:17:35 +0000

The auto dealership industry has adopted AI chatbots on many sites.

The way they’ve done it contributes to the perception of one of the principal perceived problems associated with dealing with car dealerships.

That it can suck.

Basically, the bot answers questions as a named assistant. I had Leah and Monica on subsequent days. I suspect my wife would have had Chad and Biff if she'd been the one exploring.

Anyway, the Bot isn't obviously AI until you ask a question that requires a specific answer.

In my case, when I offered three specific appointment times, it responded with the dealership's hours. That's when I knew I wasn't dealing with a person.

However, the next step is where the dealerships get it wrong in my estimation.

It’s because the Bot’s routine didn’t include a fundamental question: “Do you already have a salesperson you deal with at our dealership?”

Look, anyone who’s worked in sales of any kind knows that the end of the day, there’s a difference between a “customer” and a “client”.

A customer is a transactional type of buyer. Usually a one-off. No prior history, likely no future history.

A client is someone who DOES have a history with the dealership. They’ll approach their contact at the dealership first if they have questions.

However, the way dealerships have implemented AI, it doesn’t reward the dealership-client relationship. It prioritizes the transactional customer interaction.

What the AI does is hand off the question to an order-taking salesperson, usually new, who’s always on their phone and will react in a Pavlovian way to a notification on their phone.

“Someone wants to buy a car!”

Leading to a text – not even a phone call – from said salesperson about the car you inquired about.

Last week, when this happened to me, I was under the impression that my existing connection at the dealership wasn’t working on the Used Car side of the dealership.

When I got to the dealership, I was met by the salesperson who responded to the lead, AND my existing connection. My existing contact was super professional as always, and simply asked why we hadn’t called. He then explained why HE didn’t get our message, which is that the AI simply broadcasts a notification within the dealership system, and whichever over-eager phone-dweller responds first gets the lead.

Had I not been lazy or rushed in my search, I might have thought to reach out to him first to check if, in fact, he was working with both used and new cars.

There were a few consequences to my using the AI.

First, and most importantly, the dealership’s implementation of AI turned me into just another customer, rather than acknowledging my over 20-year association with this particular salesperson. That contributed to small, but mendable damage to my relationship with “our guy.”

If the Bot had asked the question above, I feel loyalty will increase. The recognition that the dealership values my business as a client by even asking the question changes the tone of the entire interaction.

The other consequence is that the speed of the notification and response from the other salesperson, although pretty quick, was such that we missed out on the car.

Those few minutes I could have reached out directly would have likely changed the outcome completely.

The new salesperson was professional, so this isn’t meant to disparage their skills.

My personal opinion is that by not prioritizing the CLIENT relationship, the industry reinforces the perceived Herb Tarlek "sale-no-matter-what,” and lacks the personal connection that can make car buying such an unpleasant experience.

If your business needs repeat business and wants to foster client relationships, rather than just customer relationships, then think about this when implementing automated sales solutions like chatbots. They can be genuinely terrific, but a small tweak can turn an experience from “endurable” to genuinely engaging and a win for both sides.

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Taking Care of Your Voice

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:49:19 +0000

Did you know that different climates affect your voice, even if you aren't a voice actor?

Calgary, like Denver, has a high, dry, alpine climate. Average humidity indoors is often less than 50%. Outdoor is often 60% or lower – and that’s after a month of twice the average rainfall!

I noticed yesterday that my voice was cracking or a bit more “textured/gravelly” than usual as I was recording. First thing I thought of was “Right! I have to drink water – not JUST coffee.” 🙃

So keep a few things in mind every day in hot or cold dry environments.

Hydration Is Essential

Drink plenty of **room-temperature water** throughout the day. Avoid cold beverages and opt for warm drinks like non-caffeinated herbal teas with honey for extra soothing benefits.
Incorporate hydrating foods (like cucumbers or watermelon) into your diet. In extreme dry climates, hydration should be a full-day focus.
Use a humidifier.

Warm Up and Cool Down Your Voice

Perform **vocal warm-ups**—like gentle humming, lip trills, and “sirens”—before any recording.
In cold settings, increase the duration/intensity of warm-ups since muscles and vocal folds take longer to adjust.
After long sessions/presentations, give your voice a “vocal nap” for a while. Think 30 minutes to an hour.

Optimize Your Environment

Clean radiators, air filters, and studio equipment regularly to avoid dust.
Add water bowls or humidifiers to workspaces to supplement air moisture. This actually works!

Lifestyle and Recovery

Get plenty of sleep—fatigue leads to poor breath support and vocal strain.
Avoid smoking, duh.
Don’t whisper or shout: Both can cause significant strain or damage to your vocal folds. Though sometimes, when you’re THAT person in a video game or animated production…you’ve gotta do it. That’s when the idea of a vocal nap becomes super important for recovery.

That’s a capsule version of great advice received over the years that you can apply. Happy gabbing!

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Why Professional Voice Actors Charge For Studio Services

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 23:27:16 +0000

There are all sorts of things professional voice actors do to provide value to their clients.

In the age of AI, everything in a voice actor’s business is up for reappraisal.

One of the key differentiators in my business is my Right Voice Vault studio service.

I’ve archived every client recording session since 2000 in secure, offline drives, and redundantly since 2010.

The reason is simple: I was taught to do it by the pros at Sync Spot Audio Post (merged with Twisted Pair in Calgary to create Propeller Studios).

I sublet space there for several years, and I witnessed how their archival practices provided added value for their clients.

One immediately obvious benefit was preventing data loss. Hard drives fail, people break and lose things, etc. When a client lost portions of any recorded audio session, it was immediately restored and resent.

Another, perhaps less obvious benefit is that when any production needed updating or alterations, the original session could be restored, and new voice recordings could be matched with the original for seamless integration for the intended audience.

That makes more of a difference than you might think.

We listen to audio on headphones the majority of the time, so we hear sound in a lot of detail. When sound changes in tone or quality, we notice it. When studio pros and professional voice actors work their magic, the change will zip by you like it never happened, like it was the original.

Value and cost can be tricky conversations, but if services add value to your core service (voiceover/narration), pricing the value appropriately and clearly explaining the value it provides can ease the acceptance of any fee.

In the age of AI audio technology, though, do those studio best practices STILL have value?

AI technology *can* give a client the ability to “clone” a voice actor’s performance and make the voice actor say things he never said in a new recording. It’s not always perfect, but addressing the question of how many clients say it’s “good enough” is another blog for another day.

The human heading back into the studio with attention to detail will do a better job than the AI 100% of the time. Still.

Also, there are a few issues with AI alterations to an original performance. Let’s start with the theft of the voice artist's intellectual property—their voice—and the violation of the original contract or agreement.

File this under “Just because you CAN, doesn’t mean you SHOULD.” Especially if you have an ounce of integrity and respect for your supplier.

A service/performance was supplied for a specific instance covered by a verbal or written agreement. Altering that performance in any way without the consent of the voice actor is unethical, and thankfully, in many jurisdictions, illegal. There’s also the issue of compensation. The actor should be paid if the original performance is altered, and their voice is used to update or change a narration or voiceover.

So, is there still added value in specific studio practices, including archival? 100% there is. Ask yourself how you’d feel about dealing with a human supplier that simply stopped providing the added value service that’s saved you on more than one occasion, and made you look especially good on others. It’s one thing to read another sad clause in the terms of use from a tech company that “this agreement may change without notice.” It’s another thing entirely to have it yanked without notice by a human supplier.

Not to mention that the investment made by the voice artists to guarantee broadcast-quality sound, which can be repeated for each engagement, is worth an hourly studio fee.

I hope this gives you a bit of insight into just a couple of the added value benefits of dealing with a human voice actor rather than text-to-speech or AI voices.

This human voice actor is happy to provide the right voice for many projects. Samples and a way to reach out live at www.paulboucher.com, and https://www.youtube.com/@PaulBoucher.

Contact Paul

Myths vs. Facts

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 16:13:34 +0000

Escape the Echo Chamber!

Whether it’s reporting on the presidential debate in the US, or 9/11 retrospectives, or political or other news from your area, a bit of wisdom I’ve received is it's important to:

a) look at alternate sources of information/analysis, and b) understand how our biases help shape our understanding of information.

In particular, when it comes to graphs and charts!

I subscribe to a newsletter called The Browser (https://thebrowser.com/?via=thebrowser&ref=the-browser-newsletter), which sends me three to four terrific pieces of writing every day, as well as a video, a podcast, and a daily quote.

Yesterday, with everything above in mind, they sent a piece headlined “On Fables and Nuanced Charts.”

Did you know that there’s a book that dates back to 1954 called “How To Lie With Statistics?” The information in that book has been used by everyone, from politicians to drug companies, to mislead us for decades. Charts and graphs are their favorite way of manipulating information.

That misinformation contains just enough truth to look credible, but it’s almost always guilty of oversimplifying and omitting crucial data or context (often unintentionally but often with malign intent).

In any case, the article in question can be found here: https://www.asimov.press/p/charts?ref=thebrowser.com.

This article is an eye-opening read if you’ve ever bought a chart as an evident truth because it confirms your worldview. It helps give the “why” behind the notion that you should question everything and look for corroborative or alternate sources of material on the same subject that are comfortable citing sources. And of course, that those sources are credible.

Happy reading!

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Your Voice Acting Career, Your Name, Your Life

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 21:13:12 +0000

Working as an independent actor outside of a major market, whether that actor works in voice,stage, TV, or film, involves understanding that they’re in show business and that no matter what’s come and gone, including AI, the old maxim about showbiz still applies.

Show business is 5% show and 95% business.

Viewing the acting community, specifically my global voice-acting community through that lens, voice actors can be an interesting lot.

Many of them are what I refer to as “full-on” artists. As in, “I don’t want to sully my hands with money, so I’ll let my agent take my calls and condescend to make money while practicing my craft.”

You think I’m kidding, but they’re not an insignificant faction of the community. They frequently “marry well” to a principal income earner. 😆

Then there are the “full-on” businesspeople who get into voice acting because they’ve been told they have a nice voice. So, they’re awesome at the business part (marketing, admin, etc.), but they suck or are middling at the actual craft of voice acting…and oftentimes don’t care.

These people can have some success, some even long-term, if they’re good at business relationships. Still, they’ll never unlock the top tier of voice work because they can’t compete on craft when the way every single syllable in a 60-second commercial is spoken matters.

So that leaves the rest of the modern voice-acting community – the hybrids.

As mentioned above, these voice actors are often outside the major global markets. As a result, they learn that their agents (if they can get one in a major market) will NOT call them. At best, they’ll get emails with custom audition requests until they land something that makes a lot of money for the agent/manager.

So, they learn to market locally and further afield. They do it in every way that works for them and their styles: cold-calling, direct marketing, online advertising, social media, networking face-to-face and virtually, podcasts, and more.

They build their voice-acting business one relationship at a time, but importantly, they also work on their craft.

They attend workshops facilitated by qualified coaches, NOT the “voice actor” who tried for three weeks, failed miserably at getting work, and then became a “coach” with “all that experience.” There’s a much longer AVOID list than you’d believe, and I won’t list them here because….lawsuits.

These hybrid voice actor/business managers become better actors. They get more comfortable running their careers as businesses. When they snag an agent or manager (or 2 or 3), they work proactively with them to find the best fit and way to collaborate.

In other words, they earn a much better-than-average living, often flying completely under the radar with “non-sexy” corporate narration work of every kind, including eLearning, simply because they understand the old showbiz maxim.

I’ve learned a lot from incredibly patient mentors on both the craft and business side, and I thought I’d share this online marketing business tip.

When you set up online, you’re literally one of billions of names out there. So, how do you increase your chances of people finding you? How do you protect the name/brand you’ve worked so hard to create and distinguish?

My name online is https://www.paulboucher.com.

It occurred to me very early that I should protect my name online by acquiring similar “flanking domains.” So, in my case, I also purchased the Canadian variant of my name, paulboucher.ca.

I also made sure to protect my corporate name, The Right Voice Communications Inc., by purchasing therightvoice.com and therightvoice.ca.

As time passed and it became clear how people found me online, I added a few more names to my domain cupboard.

So now, if you’re looking for French Canadian Voiceover, paulboucherfrenchcanadianvoiceover.com and paulboucherfrenchcanadianvoiceover.ca might come up.

If you’re searching for a bilingual voice actor, paulboucherbilingualvoiceover.ca and paulboucherbilingualvoiceover.com might come up.

If you’re looking for a voice actor proficient with eLearning, then therightelearningvoice.com or therightelearningvoice.ca might come up.

All of them lead back to https://www.paulboucher.com.

So, the earned wisdom from many people who know more about this than I do amounts to several things. Two of them are: think about your brand. Are there flanking domains easily available? Secondly Are there complimentary domains that might pop up in an online search that might help people find you?

I’ll leave it there and relay the one con to this strategy. Eventually, the renewals for the domains come due. So, manage your relationships well, keep your craft on point so you can keep killing the game, and then…set everything to auto-renew without a worry in the world.

Contact Paul

Stealing The Future

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 16:36:46 +0000

Some Video Game Producers Want To Steal The Future of Voice Actors

It used to be when a voice actor landed a contract with a video game company like Electronic Arts, Activision, or Disney, the results could be career-altering and, sometimes, even life-altering.

Importantly, they were mutually beneficial, especially if the work was ongoing. The company had fantastic performances to build and sell a video game with (think Red Dead Redemption, Gears of War, Assassin’s Creed, and SO many others!). The actors were part of creative teams that helped create additional chapters in fantastic stories.

Now, these same companies want to screw over the voice actors whose performances helped them make billions.

And that’s why SAG-AFTRA is striking games produced by Activision Productions Inc., Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc., Electronic Arts Productions Inc., Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc., Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc., VoiceWorks Productions Inc. and WB Games Inc.

You might remember the writers’ and subsequent actors’ strikes recently. The union fought for and won some protection from the unethical practices proposed by some of the companies.

A simplified version of one issue for actors was that various producers wanted the right to use AI to digitally replicate a background performer without consent or compensation and deploy them in additional productions without paying the actor.

What video game companies are proposing is the same unethical garbage the movie studios were: they want the unfettered right to digitally replicate any performer/performance WITHOUT compensating the actor after the initial performance has been captured.

Let’s call this what it is: it’s stealing the future of these voice actors’ careers.

The industry standard arrangement currently holds that when a performer is called back in to add to a game, or recreate a character, they are compensated. The industry wants to use AI to create a digital replica or clone, and NOT pay the performer. Ever again.

Importantly, they don’t even want the performer to KNOW. They want permission to make actors say things they didn’t say, creating new “performances” from their cloned performances without their consent.

Here’s the much more polite SAG-AFTRA language explaining the points above:

“At the bargaining table, the employers have rebuffed our proposals and countered with loophole-filled language that negates any protections they claim to be offering. Employers understand that our members’ performances have value — that’s why they want to use them. It’s only fair that members be protected and paid for the value their performances create.

Among the more egregious loopholes, employers are only willing to obtain your consent and compensate you for the use of your “digital replica” if it is recognizable as you, which carves out nearly all movement work and the majority of voice work too, such as performing in character voices, voice matching and efforts. They want to reserve the right to have your digital replica say or do things that are religious, pejorative of a protected class or that endorse a political position without telling you and obtaining your agreement first. They also claim movement performers are not really performers, but rather data — even though they continue to hire experienced professional actors and stunt performers to do this work. They are using this language because they don’t want to give movement performers the consent, control and compensation they deserve. “

There is absolutely NO way that the people negotiating on the side of these companies don’t know that this is bordering on criminal.

Whether you’re a union performer or not, the union is fighting the good fight in this one.

To read a comparison between what the union is proposing and the counter offer by the video game companies, go to this page.

The shine has been off the shiny new toy of AI for anyone working in a creative field for a long while. These are some of the reasons why.

Know your rights. Understand the issues. Don’t let these companies steal your future.

Contact Paul

Keep It Real

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 17:49:54 +0000

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.

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A New Normal?

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 16:20:49 +0000

"...Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight..." ~ Bruce Cockburn

File this under “you don’t get if you don’t ask,” or “there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

As a voice actor with a 25-year history of narrating bilingual eLearning, it's easy to discern a new normal in 2024.

More than a handful of eLearning clients have said the ugly part out loud: "We're having a tough time convincing clients to use a human narrator. They all want to try the shiny new toy: AI voice."

This particularly affects voice actors' bread-and-butter work, which is high-frequency, short-duration explainer and eLearning projects for actors living outside the big commercial production markets.

HOWEVER, when collaborating with true creatives, it's amazing what happens when the conversation becomes a win-win negotiation.

A localization company in the US that helps to convert videos into local versions (in my case, think US/Canadian English or Canadian French) approached me about collaborating in the near term and needed an agreement signed.

I got hung up on a passage in their agreement regarding Intellectual Property and sought clarification. In my request, I mentioned the concept that, as a voice actor, my voice is my intellectual property. Would the client be comfortable signing an agreement explicitly recognizing that, specifically in an AI context?

I proposed the legal language that the North American Voice Actors Collective (NAVA) posted on its website for the voice-acting community to use. You can find NAVA at https://navavoices.org.

To my delight and surprise, this client created a written agreement with all five points verbatim and accompanied it with a message supporting the rights of creatives like voice actors to their intellectual property. The whole conversation surprised and delighted them as well.

I encourage you to have this conversation with any prospective client. It will help to ensure your voice acting career remains viable.

1. Client expressly agrees not to utilize any portion of the Talent’s file, recording, or performance for purposes other than those specified in the initial Agreement between the parties, including but not limited to the creation of synthetic or “cloned” voices or for machine learning.

2. Client shall not utilize any recording or performance of Talent to simulate the client’s voice or likeness, or to create any synthesized or “digital double” voice or likeness of Talent.

3. Client specifically agrees not to sell or transfer ownership of any of the original files recording the performance of Talent to any third party for purposes of using the files for Artificial Intelligence, such as text to speech, or speech to speech uses, without Talent’s knowledge and consent.

4. Client agrees not to enter into any agreements or contracts on behalf of Talent which utilize any part of the original files recording the performance of Talent for purposes of using the files for Artificial Intelligence, such as text to speech, or speech to speech uses, without Talent’s knowledge and consent.

5. Client agrees to use good faith efforts to prevent any files of recordings or performances stored in digital format containing Talent’s voice or likeness from unauthorized access by third parties. If such files are stored in “the cloud,” Client agrees to utilize services that offer safeguards through encryption or other “up-to-date” technological means to prevent unauthorized third-party access.

Thanks for reading. Other thoughts on the voice acting industry are in other blog posts. Naturally, I hope you spend a few seconds listening to the voice (s) inside my head on the demos page!

Contact Paul

Unethical Outsourcing, The Sequel

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:25:32 +0000

Funny how things come around. I wrote about this subject almost a year ago today, and it’s circled back.

For many years, large corporate players in all sectors have looked for ways to “divide and conquer” suppliers to erode quoted prices.

There are times when this is completely above board, genuinely looking for the best match of price and value.

However, one of the most insidious ways that North American companies have affected supplier prices is through outsourcing to lower price jurisdictions, who then attempt to engage North American suppliers at prices suitable for their lower-cost location.

In voice acting, as in other businesses, the cost of the service or product should reflect the location where the work is destined to be used.

This happened again today when an audition that had come around via North American channels came around again via an off-continent channel with lower rates.

For years, generations of performers before us have fought to value and price our often-ephemeral work using objective metrics. They include (and this is not a complete list), terms of use (how long a narration can be used), and the medium or mediums the work is being used in.

Another important but often ignored consideration is the geographical location of use.

For North American voice actors, the two outsourcing locations that have acquired the most notoriety are India and China.

Both locations offer, without exaggeration, pennies on the dollar compared to the rates suppliers command when working with North American companies directly for work destined for use in North America.

Here's another real-world example. I was approached by a company in India to do work in Canadian French for a national enterprise.

The work was obviously destined to be used in Canada.

The Indian company was offering 1/10th the market rate for work that that same company, has in the past, paid me full value rates for.

When I explained to the representative of the production company in India that it didn’t make business sense for me to practically give away my service to a client who had previously paid the market accepted rate for content to be used in North America, they all but laughed. They explained that this is the price offered from that jurisdiction to companies in our back yard.

On what level is this in any way an ethical way for a North American company to treat high value, high-quality, North American suppliers?

Understand that I’m not accusing a minion somewhere on the corporate ladder of maliciously seeking to undermine neighbouring businesses, but somewhere in that food chain, someone knows exactly what impact they’re having, and they DON’T CARE.

Otherwise, they could easily instruct their third party in those jurisdictions to deliver work completed locally in that jurisdiction to be priced according to local norms, but to accept North American pricing from suppliers required to complete the project. Simple.

Knowingly eroding livelihoods in North America, and using outsourcing to purposefully disregard objective pricing norms is not ethical capitalism.

Go ahead and float a rising tide in distant jurisdictions for work performed on those shores by paying local rates. That’s one of the benefits of globalization and multi-national supply chains.

Do NOT however screw over companies in your back yard by forcing them to drop their rates by 60-90%. We will call you out. We will call out the third parties following your instructions. We will continue to refuse the work.

We know there are bottom feeders who will always accept the work. And that as they go bankrupt, others will replace them. We can’t fix stupid. Or if you prefer a more politically correct approach, “we can’t support those who, without prior acquired business knowledge, experience, and intelligence, make faulty decisions they aren’t fully qualified to comprehend the full, long-term consequences of.”

That’s my take on multi-national corporations with profits in unimaginable sums screwing over suppliers by using outsourcing. Also, those who don’t understand the ramifications of their own actions accepting work on terms that should, from every common/business-sense perspective, be re-negotiated or declined.

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AI's Galloping Evolution And The Adaptation Challenge

Tue, 14 May 2024 14:49:03 +0000

So yesterday brought another iterative development that is genuinely another leap in the AI technology changing our lives, and livelihoods.

This is the latest version of ChatGPT, ChaptGPT 4o, the “o” in the name standing for Omni.

This is not an either/or reflection.

One of the most talked about new features is the new voice interaction within the software and how natural it can sound when interacting with a human. Remove the human interaction, and once again the AI voice can sound mechanical in short order.

To my eye, that single aspect continues to point the way forward for creatives of all stripes, although my context today is voice acting: “without human interaction…”

The way forward is a narrow bridge to a future where humans make themselves an indispensable enhancement to pure AI.

So, as always in a sustainable business for small vendors like individual voice actors, the challenge is to have a “value” conversation, as opposed to a “price” conversation.

For creatives of all stripes, how do you express the value you bring as the enhancement to AI being used? How does your contribution make the result exceptional, rather than momentarily startling?

How can you quantify that value? What makes your value a compelling business proposition? What does it bring to the table that the tech by itself cannot? How do you pitch it?

All this evolution has me thinking about these questions. I don’t have any definitive answers. I will be testing my thoughts in real-world situations with clients and continue to have conversations with them to learn more. I encourage other creatives to do the same.

My feelings are also informed by an interesting exchange with one of my eLearning clients last week.

He confirmed what we’ve been feeling and seeing in the industry. A lot of low value, low-stakes eLearning is being automated by AI voices. That’s not to mean that all of this learning, processed (it’s not being narrated, only humans do that) is of low-quality.

It used to be painfully obvious when this sort of learning landed. It was awful to listen to, and “off” in a way that became obvious after listening for short lengths of time.

As the technology gallops through its evolution, that’s changed.

This particular client said “out loud” what a lot of people on the voice acting side of the industry are fearing: that many clients are clamouring for “automation” rather than human choices on the narration side.

That’s due to a large number of factors, and although cost and profitability are high on the list, there are others. Speed. Simplicity. Consistency. All things in which the tech can easily notch wins against humans.

It’s also due to clients wanting to be perceived as being on the bleeding edge, so they will “overuse” the new toy, and there will be an inevitable “correction” as the technology finds its place.

The client also mentioned a new term – which led me further down this path to thinking that there’s a high-value role for humans in this specific field – “meta humans.”

For a meta human to exist, there must be a human base. At “this point” in the technology’s development, like many other AI attempts at “purely synthetic” creation, if something is purely based on a synthetic base, the quality of the creation degrades very quickly to a human eye or ear - from a human perspective.

In short, humans are essential to the equation. It’s up to us humans to make our case convincingly to the other humans.

Contact Paul