The voice has been an amazingly powerful tool in advertisement and business, able to create deep impressions even on the subconscious of the human mind. Voice overs have majorly been handled by skilled human artists who are able to deliver scripts with finesse. However, it has not been the most profitable option for business owners. Generally, employing the services of a voice artist means paying an extra cost besides the actual cost of creating and editing their content. But what if this cost can be avoided altogether by the use of artificial intelligence?
As with almost everything else, science has been working relentlessly towards finding out how it can apply technology to fill and satisfy this role using artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been applied to voice-overs in an attempt to create realistic human-sounding voices which can be used to interact with individuals. These synthetic voice actors have been used by brands for digital assistants, video-game characters, and corporate videos. Previously associated with scam calls and trickery, these AI voices are starting to be embraced by businesses and brands who seek to maintain a consistent sound in millions of interactions with customers, especially online.
Synthetic voices aren’t so much of a new idea. They’ve been in use for a while. However, the voices that have been applied so far, including the voices of the original Siri and Alexa, merely attached words and sounds together. The result has been a clunky, robotic effect that gives an unrealistic impression. They flatten the depth of essential key messages and did not quite allow the audience to form a bond with the content. Efforts to create a more natural sound with these synthetic voices have been a laborious manual task.
However, all of that is changing. Thanks to recent breakthroughs in deep learning, it is now possible to replicate many of the subtleties of human speech in the most natural way. Artificially Intelligent (AI) voice generators are being wired to create a unique, distinguishable voice that fully captures human emotions in context without coming off as monotonous or unnatural. But how effective are these voice generators? How different are they from the previous iterations? When put to the test, 80% of people who listened could not tell whether it was human or neural AI voices.
The gap between human voices and Artificial Intelligence, AI-generated voices has been consequently reduced to a blur. To the extremely trained ear, the blur manifests itself is largely essential emotions, like sadness or anger, but beyond these subtle variances, the voices are almost entirely the same. AI-generated voices can pause and breathe at all the key sections of the script. Users can also alter the style or emotion to suit the message they’re trying to pass across.
With AI doing this much, creators can rely on them to come to the rescue when delivering voiceovers for their corporate presentations, gaming, podcasts, and e-learning engagements without damping the overall quality of their rendition. What’s best? They can get it all with just a one-time payment and never have to worry about paying voiceover artists a day in their life.
A lower cost of creating content is always a huge plus for creators that put out a vast array of content every week. As long as they create great content, they can rest, fully aware that their content will be delivered with such vibrant finesse and consistency.
A decent stream of creators are already embracing the new improvements with AI and as it stands, many more are teeming towards its use for their voiceovers. One thing is almost certain if AI continues to evolve voiceovers at this pace: the next few years will capture the massive shift in independence from human voice artists to neural Artificial Intelligence (AI) voices.
Voiceovers are the tool to reach out and connect to the thoughts and emotions of viewers and listeners. From commercials to documentaries, a video with an amazingly done voice-over creates a different, long-lasting, and even unforgettable impact.
iVoice Africa offers the very best quality of voice-overs to fit your media needs. Our team of professional artists would be eager to get to work to bring your scripts to life. We also provide translation and localization services. Reach us via +234 7026276411 or via email @ info@ivoiceafrica.com today!
