I did a video a couple years ago about a thing I did in Factorio[0] and got a couple comments who didn’t ask if I had used an AI voice, they just straight up told me that the AI voice I used was off putting. I didn’t use an AI voice, in fact I appeared on camera at the end of the video in part so that people wouldn’t have to guess, but I guess people who thought I was AI didn’t feel like watching the whole video.
I suppose I don’t mind people using AI voices if they have a thick accent or are shy about their voice, but if I’m watching a video and clock the voice as AI (usually because the tone is professional but has no expression and then the speaker mispronounces a common word or acronym) it does make me start to wonder if the script is AI. There are a lot of people churning out tutorials that seem useful at first but turn out to have no content (“draw the rest of the owl” type stuff) because they asked AI to create a tutorial for something and didn’t edit or reprompt based on the output. The video essay world is also starting to get hit pretty hard, to the point that I’m less willing than ever to watch content unless I already know the creator’s work.
Off topic but I really enjoyed that video, thanks!
The voice... idk, I don't hear a lot of voices where I think or know of was generated so I'm not qualified to say but it didn't give me generated vibes. There's no glitches or mispronounciations that I'd expect to pop up at least a few times across 15 minutes of material
I remember a video where the only thing that stuck with me was that the guy was working on his English skills, and used an AI voice. That's not abnormal by any stretch of the imagination nor memorable, but how he edited the AI voice made it about as natural as a normal voice.
I doubt it’s affecting his work, but my impression is that if anyone is owed money from the use of their personal likeness in AI image generators (as a source for generic figures, not as someone specifically requested by the prompt) then Pierce Brosnan is likely near the front of the queue.
I'm sure there's some voice actor out there who can't get work because they sound too similar to the generated voices that appear in TikTok videos.