I was listening to a client station’s programming on hold the other day, when a spot came on which was obviously ”voiced” by artificial intelligence.
It sounded horrible.
It was mechanical, too perfect—and completely without soul or any human characteristics at all.
That reminded me of a conversation I had with Jeffrey Hedquist not long ago, in which he told me that national advertisers and those in larger markets are abandoning AI-generated commercials because, however well they can emulate a human voice, they just don’t sound human, and listeners are complaining.
But, Jeffrey said, smaller markets are all over AI because it saves time and money. Especially cheap AI.
I urge you to rethink what at first seemed to be a panacea before you lose all credibility and annoy your audience to the point of tune-out.
You can’t brag about being local if your voices are coming from some server farm in Silicon Valley.