The VO Meter, Measuring Your Voice Over Progress. The VO Meter is brought to you by voiceactorwebsites.com, Vocal Booth to Go, podcastdemos.com, Global Voice Acting Academy, JMC Demos, and IPDTL. And now, your hosts, Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley.
Okay, so we’re back live at VOcation 2019. We’re at the Picnic at Riverside Park, now joined by Jim Kennelly and Hugh Edwards. Gentlemen, welcome.
Thanks, guys. Happy to be here.
Yeah, me too.
So tell me a little bit about what you’re enjoying about the conference so far. Jim, why don’t you start?
For me, we’re always interested in meeting new talents, so having a one-on-one experience here has given me as a producer and as someone who casts every day, an opportunity to get to know talent a little closer. And I think that when I cast specifically, that’s to my advantage.
And Hugh?
Yeah. This is a really intimate conference. Unlike a lot of them that are really massive and kind of slightly impersonal, this one you can see the whites of people’s eyes and there’s a lot of personal relationships going on.
And yeah, it’s been quite special, actually. And because the focus is just about business, it doesn’t feel like there’s been any kind of padding going on. You know, people are here for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to help their businesses grow.
And I think they’re getting value for their money here.
That’s great. So both of you were part of the AI panel last night. Jimmy, you were the moderator, and Hugh, you were one of the panelists.
What was surprising about either questions from the audience or that came up from the other panelists?
What did you think, Hugh?
Well, I mean, the future of AI, I think we should clarify that we were really talking about voice and TTS in AI, as opposed to AI in general. But the general feeling of the voice over public, I think, is that people are a bit scared because there’s a lack of knowledge and the unknown is always a bit scary. And I think one of the things that the panel did pretty well actually was reassure them that this isn’t the end of the world.
It may change and we may have to adapt a little bit, but as human beings, we’re always going to evolve. I mean, you look at Uber and what happened there. The taxi industry went crazy for about a year and then Lyft came along and everything rebalanced.
And it will be the same when driverless cars come along and it will be the same when TTS properly takes off. Humans will readdress the balance somehow. So I think people don’t need to be as scared as they feel.
The robots aren’t coming to take all our jobs, basically. It’s going to evolve and it will be different. But that was my main thing that I felt happened in that panel.
That was the goal of the panel was to educate people that the future of voice overs is bright, that AI is a stand-alone industry, and that the voice over industry will still exist and evolve, but we’re going to integrate or augment your voice over career with synthetic voices, with new opportunities and new platforms to work on. So we really wanted to get across that it’s good news.
Me and Rupa had an idea for like mid on stage, which we’ll be talking about afterwards, about how we can actually commoditize our own voices with TTS, you know, and become less of a service industry while still doing the jobs that we want. So I think…
March over to the US Patent Office and file it right away.
Sure, yeah, yeah. I’ve got someone doing that right now. But no, I mean, there aren’t that many people who can do it in terms of building the tech to be able to go and do it.
But because we’re at the very start of the industry, no one can see what potential opportunities there are yet. And I promise you there will be some because there’s loads of bright cookies around.
There’s a platform shift to voice and the story is just beginning. So it’s important to get educated about what’s happening, the people who are the players and then in time, introduce yourself to them and build on your career.
I really like your analogy here, the taxi reference, because I’ve taken a taxi four times so far on this trip. And you know, every time I looked at Uber and the taxi was cheaper, so they’re still surviving.
Exactly. I mean, all the different areas of AI, not just voice, are going to change things radically. But these things are supplemental to our life.
They’re not core to our life. And human voice is something that is core to our life. And even if TTS takes over in a big way for a little while, there will be a reaction to it, and people will want humans to do things again.
So we may end up changing the types of jobs or the approach of jobs or the way we get jobs or whatever, but the voice industry will still be there.
Voice is all going to be about choice. The personalization of apps is going to create new opportunities for talents. It’s going to be great.
Can’t wait. Well, thanks for being here. Thanks for donating your time to the conference.
Our pleasure.
And we’ll see you at the rest of the panels and discussions.
Yeah, thanks so much. Great interview.
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