Voiceovers: Human and AI

 

Voices. We are surrounded by them 24/7.

Car noises,birds tweeting,Alexa repeating her recorded-talks, people screaming, there’s no stop to it. They can be both our greatest weapon and biggest weakness. They are tools we can use to help us navigate certain social situations while they naturally develop to become part of our identities.

Our voice is our primary mean of communication, and most of us can’t go for more than a couple of minutes without using it. We don’t use our voice for just talking though, it can be used to do a variation of things. The most obvious example would be singing.

The human voice is not limited to just a couple sounds, no, the human voice can make a complex range of sounds but none of this could be possible if it weren’t for the complex system you possess in your throat.

Just like the human system, the AI voiceovers too, have complex structures which enable us to understand and comprehend them. As we know, AI assistant is an application program that understands natural language voice commands and completes tasks for the user.Siri,Alexa,Google Home,and Cortana use AI to recognize and respond to voice-commands.

The tone of voice may be modulated to suggest emotions such as anger, surprise, fear, happiness or sadness.

We like some sounds, while we get irritated with others.

The question is, Why? Why does voices affect us ?How, does voices affect us? Is it the same with AI voices?

As we grow up and become socialized, the new people we encounter, such as colleagues, teachers, and even cartoon characters on TV, influence the way we speak.

We borrow certain words and their pronunciation as our language develops. This can be playful – for example, the way that young children repeat nursery rhymes – but also begins the formation of a distinct individual voice.

Once we reach teenage years, or perhaps even earlier, we see the first signs of deliberate voice manipulation – what might be called the ‘voice chameleon’ phenomenon. This is where we adopt different ways of speaking depending on who we are interacting with.

 

Let’s look at a list of pros and cons for AI voice and human voiceovers.

 

AI:

Pros:

Control. Using a developed platform allows having full control over a completely unique voice that was customized uniquely.

Instant production. As soon as you input the words, you can get an AI voice interpretation of the content at the click of a button.

 

Cons:

Ethics. Should robots be allowed to sound like humans or should there always be a way to distinguish a robot from a human?

 

Still not life-like. While these latest AI Voice advancements are impressive, you can still detect a layer of robotic, non-human sounding tones and inflection. There’s a good chance that this may be detected by customers.

 

Authenticity. When a real person (be it a celebrity or well-known public figure) voices a brand, that person’s lifestyle and ethos are layered on to how people will view your brand. This, in turn, makes the customer associate those traits with the brand. A brand won’t be able to access that depth when opting for AI voice.

 

 

Human-Voice:

Pros:

Real. A human voice will always be a human voice. No amount of programming will allow a robot to communicate the way that a completely unique person, can.

 

Fewer legal headaches. Next to no laws have been put in place to police AI Voice companies on what ways robots can communicate like humans to humans.

 

Cons:

Limited Career and Lifespan: If you have a particular human voice representing a brand, that individual has a limited lifespan and at any point, could change careers or retire.

 

Reputation Can Be Unpredictable: Many brands have been burned by being associated with a celebrity, whose behavior is found to be in misalignment with the brand values.

 

 

Wrapping it up, whether a person prefers human voice or AI voice, depends entirely on him/her. It can never be the same for everyone. But as a hint, the voice should be pleasant, polite and NEVER rude!