Voice Actors and the Impacts of AI: What's Happening, and What's Next?

Unbeknownst to me (at least, until my research for this piece of news began), there’s a website called voices.com. Not only is it intuitive for navigation, but it’s also chock-full of resources that businesses’ creative teams, marketers, producers, instructors and surely others can utilize for high-quality voice-over talent. According to Voices, “It’s quick and easy to hire professional and global voice actors for any project.” Voices, as an industry go-to for professional voice-over needs, retains a diverse pool of more than 4,000,000 voice-over talent across 160 countries.

So, we’ve got Voices as a talent-packed marketplace. This story’s other key component, which readers may or may not see coming, is one of the hottest subject matters on the planet right now:

AI.

This week, Voices officially acquired Voices.ai. And with this acquisition, Voices intends on launching its next-gen software development platform for voice applications.

Like most developer platforms – sets of standardized tools and services that facilitate self-service software development and empower developers to create, test and deploy – the Voices.ai platform will include APIs, tutorials, libraries, and other documentation and cloud infrastructure services.

Moreover, according to a recent poll it conducted, Voices found that at least 40% of its customer base has used AI-generated voices in the past, and more than 60% would consider using them in the future. Couple this with a surge in voice-over industry jobs (especially in the voice assistant category; a mammoth-sized 440% year-over-year increase), and it makes sense why Voices made this move; one certainly motivated by the boom in AI we’ve seen in the past six months.

“Let me be clear: There will always be a place for voice actors who bring highly unique interpretations to scripts in order to create character voices,” said David Ciccarelli, the founder and CEO of Voices, “but there are admittedly many applications that don’t require artistic interpretation. These types of applications, traditionally known as industrials, are a perfect fit for synthetic voices, more commonly referred to as AI voices."

Many will likely find relief in Ciccarelli’s statement, given he recognizes the value of human voices and that the goal isn’t full-on replacement. According to the BBC, the societal reality of “AI anxiety” has set in; some statisticians claim that 57% of lower-paying jobs across industries could be at risk of being replaced by AI by the year 2040. (Though, notably, projections also cite that new kinds of jobs will be created as the progression of AI chugs forward.) Additionally, the annual workforce survey from PwC indicated that nearly one-third of its total respondents worry about the prospect of their roles being replaced by technology.

The long story short? In such times, it can be reassuring when leadership takes note of branching concerns and addresses them, as Ciccarelli has regarding AI.

Ciccarelli also said, “short, informative and dynamically changing content is an example of what AI may be best-suited for, like public service announcements, the updating of eLearning modules, and turn-by-turn direction recordings.”

Join the early access Voices waitlist ahead of Voices.ai’s launch.

Edited by Greg Tavarez