What if I told you you could type a script, have a computer read it, and within seconds, have the perfect voiceover in any accent you want... for free?
Would it sound natural? Real? Could it pass the uncanny valley? Or perhaps would all just be a big waste of time.
In this episode of the TDGR Podcast, we let you be the judge. Stay Tuned, it's about to get deep!
With massive advancements in AI, text-to-speech technology has vastly improved in recent years. In some cases, to the point that voices produced by computers are virtually indistinguishable from humans. This technology is by no means perfect, but, as I said, it's pretty darn close.
So, what does this mean for content creators? As anyone who knows me, has read a past blog post or heard an episode of my podcast knows, I love to test new technologies before I recommend them or their applications to my clients. I'm very much a "practice what you preach" kind of guy.
With that in mind, I wanted to test the capabilities and practical applications of the technology by seeing if I could produce a full podcast episode using nothing more than text-to-speech technology. More importantly, I wanted to see if the episode would be something that people would actually listen to, or if the end product would sound like the podcast equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
There are many reasons that someone might want to utilize this kind of technology. Perhaps you're a great writer, but not a big fan of having your voice recorded. You know you need content, but are not sure how to go about creating it. Maybe you need voiceover work for an explainer or marketing video on YouTube. Maybe you'd love to start a podcast, but don't have proper recording equipment and operate on a tight budget. I've often said that many blogs would make great podcast segments or even full episodes!
The practical applications for content creation and repurposing content really are endless.
I was able to create a true test of the effectiveness of the technology. I wanted to try different AI voices, inflections, accents, and more, and blend them seamlessly into one podcast segment for an episode. In fact, I wanted to make sure the entire episode, with the exception of my professional intro by Steve Zarro, was 100% created with text-to-speech.
All of this was done simply by using a free tool at voicegenerator.io. Now, please note that voicegenerator.io is not a sponsor of this episode or my blog.
That said, I was able to create an engaging podcast episode, rather quickly, simply by going to the website, typing out my script, and choosing from any one of 13 different English voices provided, and hitting play. Each time I hit play, the segment was temporarily saved into a small "playlist". I then used my phone to record the audio directly from my laptop's speakers.
Some of the text samples faired better than others, but overall, I have to say, I was impressed with the application- Especially for being a free tool.
