13242: Survey: How Is AI Actually Affecting You?

Hey there, hero!

We’re a few years in on the AI onslaught.

No doubt, you have had thoughts on this, both as an artist and as a lover of art.

And, I’d be surprised if your thoughts haven’t changed and become more informed and nuanced over the years.

I’d love to know what those thoughts currently are.

Scroll down and let me know how you currently view AI and synthetic media when it comes to your work as an artist…as well as your enjoyment and consumption of art.

Some thought starters:

 – Do you feel at risk of being replaced by AI?

 – Do you use AI tools? If so, do you feel any guilt at using those tools?

 – Do you even realize when AI is being used in the audio, video or text of the content you consume?

 – What does the future hold? What are your biggest AI concerns?

Let me know in the comments below.

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Responses

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  1. As a consumer, my major interaction with AI is the prioritized AI summaries in google searches, which I find to be 50% okay, and 50% either frustratingly misleading or if fact INCORRECT!!
    As an audiobook narrator, the company that hires me gives me lots of non-fiction work (maybe 60% or more of the work they send me is non-fiction, and a lot of it quite niche, like books with granular details about the battles of WW 2, for example, or books about advances in big data). I’m very worried that when AI gets good enough at voices, the first legit audiobook projects lost to AI will be non-fiction, which will take away a significant chunk of my income.

  2. I am very frustrated with ACX in terms of AI right now. I think it was several months ago they offered me the opportunity to make a voice replica, which I wanted nothing to do with. It feels that they are really pushing AI over human narrators. I have an author friend who claims his books were made into audiobooks without his knowledge or consent. I have my doubts that’s truly how that went down, but he doesn’t see anything wrong with it as ‘he can’t afford to pay a narrator what they’re worth, and anyone would regret taking his books on royalty share.’ Then yesterday I had another author I’ve worked with repeatedly ask me about voice replication as she’s been contacted about it repeatedly from ACX.

    I am really happy with how Pozotron uses AI to make the tedious parts of the job less tedious and allow me to spend most of my energy on the artistic and collaborative work of making audiobooks. The fact is I would love a replicant tool I could trust so that *I* could make minor fixes at my desk rather than having to go back and do small pickups in the booth. I strongly feel that AI needs to be used to assist artists rather than trying to replace them.

    1. I’m finding speech-to-speech (STS) useful. I can record stuff where I focus on the emotion, pacing, and performance, less on the timbre and tone. Then I use an idealized sample as a “guide voice” for STS conversion to get the right tone, timbre, and “studio sound” on it. It doesn’t get the same attention as text-to-speech (TTS) does because it still requires a human performer to do the source audio that gets converted.

      That said, I think TTS can be used for work where there’s less emotion (“we value your business – please hold for the next available operator”).

  3. Paying attention to the new developments, while maintaining a sense of balance about AI. I do utilize it in writing scripts for my IVR clients.

  4. I don’t create using AI, or consume anything made with AI (that I know of), but regarding my life long hobby of Dungeons & Dragons, an artist for one of the source books was fired for using AI in their art, which I feel is the right call. I’m not an AI hater, I simply want to interact mostly with things created by humans. Something “AI created” may come across my path in the future that I’d be ok with.

  5. A few years ago, as an eLearning voice talent and script writer, I was *forced* by the customer (a large commuter railroad in my region) to use a robot voice to read my training scripts. Their idea was that in the future, if I become unavailable, they could revise chunks of content and still get the same voice. The downside of it was that I couldn’t help but feel bad for the trainees, in that the voice was just ‘parroting words,’ with no comprehension of what they meant, making it much more difficult for them to meaningfully absorb the highly technical material. It also meant that in the long run I had to do a lot more work on the scripts just to make it pronounce proprietary terms, for example, of which there were a great many, correctly. It was just a terrible move for them to have made, and I hope I never have to do that again. Of course, AI has improved somewhat in the 2-3 years since then, but even so, a voice that is incapable of understanding the material will always be a hindrance to effective learning, and necessitate more work on the part of the creator.
    As a consumer, it’s much simpler. As soon as I hear an AI voice on something like a YT video, I may leave a note to the creator in the comments (“You worked so hard on developing a good script, it’s a shame that you then ruined it by using a robot voice,” etc.), but I invariably skip the rest of that video, and sometimes will give it a “thumbs down.” I just find it so distracting that there’s no point in even continuing to watch it. I usually tell the algorithm to not suggest videos from that channel anymore.

    1. Glad you said that, instead of just stopping the video or the real. I will now give it a thumbs down and make a comment like that. Thank you for that.

  6. I have an ongoing argument with CoPilot as it wants to change how I phrase my sentences. And, just for kicks I asked CoPilot to create an ad campaign for the newest audiobook I created. There were 3 pages of information. I shared it with the author, and she said, well some of it is from my marketing and some is flat out made up. Which is what I thought.
    I also received a message from this author sharing this information:
    “Did you read that KDP and ACX are now offering Virtual Voice option for audio books? I think it’s rather an insult after putting all the work in having narrator producers, the ACX contracts, the production process….to underhandedly cut people like you from the production process. I, for one, will not take this shortcut. I’ve enjoyed working with you.” She also shared that she had tried having an AI narrate one of her “smutty” Books (her words) and that it sounded like it tried to have emotion however it didn’t understand there were different characters. She is not a fan.
    I will always prefer to hear “real” people read and act and tell stories. AI’s lack nuance, emotion and understanding of what it is to be human. That said, seeing what they write when you ask for information or ideas is interesting. A bit too clinical for me, however a good thought starter.
    I’m reminded of an episode of Mr. Novak that I have remembered from my childhood. Burgess Meredith is talking to Richard Chamberlain about computers and robots. He says “Did you hear the one about the 2 robots waiting for the bus? One turns to the other and says, “Do you believe in Man?”
    For me, I think AI has its place. And I think people need to be taught to think for themselves. AI should not be allowed to take away a person’s ability to reason. As for how far they should go?……My jury is still out.

  7. Funny you should mention that, I recently was listening to a YouTube video, and it was so obvious that it was a eye, because there was no feeling in the voice and I couldn’t even continue to listen to it. I stopped and decided I didn’t care about this anymore. Same thing with Facebook reels. It’s so obvious when there’s this female voice that is so fake and it makes me think of when we were talking about how you can tell the difference and that’s why audiobooks aren’t usually done by AI. Although I have to be honest at some point, I’m afraid that they’re going to get better at it or people are going to be more open to not having any feeling in the voices and are willing to accept it and that our RHs- are going to be willing to use it because it’s cheaper. Your thoughts?

  8. I’m trying to make an audiobook of my first published novel. I have done voice work as part of my job, but it’s been more “casual”… narrating an instructional video, giving a tech talk, emceeing a tech conference. But making an audiobook was kicking my ass, being the producer, director, studio tech, and talent.

    I find almost every Text to Speech (TTS) model unable to deliver the performance I want and there’s not enough fine-grained control to dial in the performance. But zero-shot cloning has been REALLY useful.

    What it does do well is let me record myself performing when my voice isn’t ideal, then run it through a “speech to speech” transformer which uses an idealized sample of my voice (early morning, solid timbre, post production improvements) to help keep the timbre and levels consistent despite doing it at my desk with a Blue Yeti X.

    I’m able to do all AI conversion locally using an open source engine and model, so I could do it even if the internet were out.