Artificial Intelligence definitely will play a more significant role in the voice-over industry. But AI-generated voice will not replace humans in voice-over industry, yet.
Software to modify and generate human voice already exists. It is not quite mature yet and not that simple to implement so that everyone can use it for any project. That gives sort of peace in mind in the near future, AI-generated voice will not replace voice actors.
Have you asked this question yourself? Do you think it is possible for AI-generated voice to replace humans in the voice-over industry, and if so, then when?
If you heard, over the past years, AI and deep learning terms were on the rise in news headlines. It is because the IT industry advanced in this subject a lot and continuously improving in training AI and finding new areas of its implementation.
Driver assistant technologies, face recognition, and even car autopilots for self-driving cars are becoming a part of our lives. What in the past used to be a sci-fi nowadays became a reality.
And technology doesn’t stop there. There is not yet defined or observed limits on how much Artificial Intelligence integrates into our lives and what impact it will have on society. How much more work will be performed by robots and computers instead of humans?
Automatization has replaced people in the manufacturing industry, and robots play a further important role in the agricultural sector. In movies making graphic effects made with computer software is taking huge parts, and some movies are entirely made with the use of computer graphics.
Will the voice-over industry be the next to fall to technological progress?
Robotic voices have been around for a while. We could hear the readings of translated words in Google Translate in the early 2000s, and even earlier in the 1950-60s first text to speech devices were developed.
Currently, voice generation is on the rise and finds its way to human ears through the assistant software like Google Assistant and entertaining devices like Alexa from Amazon.
Many companies from startups like Resemble to software enterprises like Microsoft started to offer voice generation as a service. They are capable of creating a digital voice like yours from a small voice audio sample.
Voice generation technologies proved its capability to make an undistinguished voice. You may hear about perfectly generated voices of Joe Rogan and Bill Gates. The likeness to the original was scary to me.
AI voice generation technology is mostly used by software development and media production companies. For example, Ubisoft company used voice modulation when using a few voice talents generated thousands of voices to the characters’ new open-world game. It is quite an impressive approach, but humans still got a job to do to deliver their voice samples.
One argument would be that many voice talents could’ve had an opportunity to get hired for voice-over thousands of characters. But this argument is weak. Instead, that game wouldn’t get enough time and money to hire that many voice-over actors. In this case, technology didn’t cut the humans jobs but allowed to create a more ambitious project.
I believe this will be the most common case of use AI-generated software. It will be used where otherwise it is not possible or not efficient to hire people.
What makes voice talents to worry is a likeness of computer-generated voice to a human voice and ability of software and particularly Artificial Intelligence to copy any human voice.
Here is really no need to worry AI will take over the voice-over industry. The demand for human voices won’t go away. Real voices will be required to serve as a base model, so the chances are, you are going to get paid. But competition may become stronger. To stay in business you must know how to win voice over audition.
AI-generated voice solutions must be far advanced to pose a real threat to a human in the voice-over industry. And to drive this progress, there would need to be a demand from a market. But the demand for the indistinguishable human voice is not there.
People want to know if they communicate with a real person or with a bot. Also, there is no particular need to improve the voice assistant on your phone or GPS navigation beyond the level to sound like a real human.
Software generated voice technology becoming better as AI improves. However, the research shows that people respond better to the real human voice and though. And it is still a long before AI and software solutions get to the level of generating voice on a fly and until become capable of holding fast, a swift and meaningful conversation like another person.
To replace voice-over talent, the AI should be able to correctly interpret emotions in the script and manipulate the voice tone and level, including spacing and pitch, so the listener remains entertained and not able to distinguish the audio from a human voice.
Does it mean it is still worse for you to start your voice-over career? Absolutely yes. In fact, you should not wait any longer. It is easy to become voice-over talent and prosper in these advantageous times.