AI still can’t do it all …..

No one promised me a rose garden busting into this field.a few years ago

Over the past six months or so I have auditioned for dozens of fun-sounding audiobooks on ACX, where many voice actors go to die if they don’t get work. I’ve done some of the best auditions I’ve ever done, gotten some encouraging reactions to my submissions, but in the end, I received neither that proverbial carousel ring I reached for nor the cigar I got close to.

Rejections can happen for many reasons, and I’ll attempt to name a few of them here:

(1) my voice is not a “fit” for a particular narrative. While I can sound like an 16-year old for a short time, such as for a character, I can’t do it for an entire book. Altering my voice from a mature alto who sings jazz at Saturday night karaoke to a squeaky-sounding adolescent is simply a bridge too far.

(2) I don’t accept royalty share offers. If I were in my 20s looking to make voice acting my life-long career, I think I would take just about anything offered me. But unless an author already has a hefty track record of sales, I don’t have the time to see if the hours and hours I put into recording their book will offer me any return on investment. Recording an audiobook is hard work. And the stars in my eyes appear only when I am paid good, hard money.

(3) I charge more than they are willing to pay. I don’t sell myself cheaply. But those who hire me are quick to justfy what I charge without my having to explain my worth. I am positively anal about giving an author what they want.

(4) AI is taking a huge chunk out of the voice acting world. Yes, folks, it’s getting better and better. But stay tuned. I’ll tell you a story about a job I just got that renewed my faith in live, human voice acting.

(5) It’s a number game. I have always understood this. As a freelance writer, you can find good writers everywhere, just as you can find good narrators. Competition is stiff.

But miracles still happen. The last few books that have come my way are because authors came HERE. To my website. They listened to my samples. They watched my YouTube video. THEY found ME. Exciting? You bet.

What’s most interesting about a project I was just offered, however, was that AI actually HELPED me get hired. How? A documentary film company was looking for their true stories to be made into audiobooks and first tried AI narration. I know they wanted to see how it all sounded as well as to see how long the narration would take. Strangely enough (because this was a first for me), when they contacted me to negotiate for their first audiobook, they sent me their AI-narrated files. Perhaps they wanted me to get a flavor for what it sounded like with a disembodied voice narrating it? Hmmmm. If that were the case, they wouldn’t be looking for a human.

No. They wanted parts of the documentary narrative to have vocal urgency, to show curious tones, and to engage the listener with slightly pregnant pauses in all the right places. AI simply doesn’t know how to do that yet. Not sure who will teach it to them, but it won’t be me. I mean — HOW do you teach a robot to sound puzzled? Or curious? Or concerned? Or even slightly surprised?

This new gig (and others to follow with this coimpany, I hope) is not character-laden. I need not tell a cute or dramatic story or act out a scene. I just need to sound like the same person who became a journalist long ago. Who’d a thunk? Truth be told, In the alternate universe of my dreams long ago, I’d have been Diane Sawyer in “60 Minutes” if my good ole dad had not discouraged me from becoming an investigative journalist.

So for this job I am engaging but not emotional. My voice and delivery of their words can’t have a stake in the outcome. but it DOES have to leave the listener with thought-provoking questions, which is what a journalist is supposed to do.

Oh, I am still voicing charactes in a fantasy book and even playing a witch in a radio play alongside all this. But none of these fun projects were because I auditioned for them. And this last one is because I frickin’ ROBBED AI of a job.

I am finally doing a few backflips