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“Come and look at this,” your colleague told you. You came closer to see a video about the secret lives of ants. At least, that’s what you thought it was, from the many ants you saw on the screen (millions of them, it seems) and what little of the garbled narration you were able to catch.
It wasn’t until hours later, when your team meets to discuss what you’ve just watched, that you wish the person who has made the video would use the artificial intelligence (AI) text-to-speech service for their subsequent productions.
The video isn’t a documentary — and it isn’t about ants either. Instead, it’s supposed to be a learning/inspirational video about the power of communication, collaboration, distinct roles, and members of an organization doing their job promptly and correctly.
The narrator was just inept at using their voice to accomplish the video’s aim, and a human-sounding AI would probably have done a much better job.
AI text-to-speech services exist, and they can do a more than adequate job of providing realistic, human-sounding voiceovers to your corporate videos, among other uses.
Companies that provide AI speech services use deep learning, letting their text-to-speech programs process thousands (probably millions) of hours of human speech.
The programs assimilate what they’ve consumed, imbuing their spoken output with the characteristics of a human voice. The more voices they “learn,” the better they become at approximating human speech patterns.
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The Benefits of Using AI Text-to-Speech Programs
Low cost is a primary benefit of using AI text-to-speech converters.
Yes, you may not feel the pinch if you need voiceover services infrequently, say only once a year.
However, if your customer happiness department churns out hundreds of instructional videos per month, having an AI text-to-speech service for voiceovers will save you big bucks.
Efficiency is another benefit of AI text-to-speech programs.
It takes time to produce human voiceovers. For instance, the ratio of combined production and editing time to actual content length when creating audiobook audio is 3.5:1. This means you need to spend three and a half hours recording and editing the audio of an hour-long audiobook.
Add to this the time required to prepare everything for production, and you can see that converting readable content to audible content using voice actors demands a significant time investment.
In contrast, AI text-to-speech programs can quickly provide hours of audio content. You can even use integrations to convert to audio magazine articles, blog posts, and knowledge-base articles on the fly.
Finally, AI text-to-speech services provide a wide variety of AI voice options. It is available in many languages and offers a diverse range of accents. Depending on the program you’re using, you can probably choose:
- Whether the speaker is male or female
- From hundreds of individual AI voices
- Language
- Vocal style (regular, assistant, news, chat, customer support)
- Tone
- Pronunciation
Thus, your audio content will have a wider reach. For example, you won’t have to focus only on your English-speaking audience. Furthermore, the resulting content will be that much more accessible and relatable to your target audience.
This is not to say that AI text-to-speech alternatives are perfect. An excellent human speaking voice is still more engaging than an advanced AI voice, especially during prolonged speeches.
However, use AI if you don’t have access to that outstanding voice talent (that can be expensive,, too) or only need short voiceovers. It would be much more understandable, relatable, and impactful than a mediocre human voice.
AI Text-to-Speech Use-Case Scenarios
The following are some ways you can use AI text-to-speech generators.
1. Video Voiceovers
Do you make how-to videos for your customers? Perhaps you have corporate videos for your employees. How about short promotional video ads? Whenever you have a video that requires a voiceover, leave it to an AI text-to-speech program.
Using an AI voice, particularly with an intonation, style, and pronunciation you can customize will ensure your brand will have a consistent voice in your video resources. With ads, you can use AI to ensure your video voice will be relatable to your target audience.
2. Voiceovers for E-Learning Materials
Are you a provider of online learning courses? With AI text-to-speech programs, you can create hours and hours of video lessons efficiently.
Yes, you can use your own voice for your materials. However, if an AI voice can do a better job, leave it to the software and save your effort (and time) for something more consequential, like developing lesson plans.
The great thing about AI is that you can even create materials in other languages. This means you can expand the reach of your English-medium business intelligence course to non-English-speaking learners.
3. Voice Responses for IVR
IVR stands for interactive voice response which is used in automated phone systems that handle customer service calls. When you call a customer service hotline, the voice that tells you to “Press one to know your balance, two to report card theft, three to apply for a credit card, etc.,” is part of an IVR.
Through advanced AI technology, you can now create interactive voice responses at super-fast turnaround times; you don’t need to screen and book voice actors. You can also change your voice responses (and quickly deploy changes) as often as you need and want.
4. Audible Versions of Readable Content
Do you publish content on the web? Do you have a blog, magazine, portal, or some other type of online resource? You can integrate an AI text-to-speech program with your content management system so readers can choose to listen to your articles.
This will help you repurpose your content, reach auditory learners, increase engagement, and comply with relevant accessibility regulations.
More Human-Sounding AI
Gone are the days when AI voices sounded disembodied and unnatural. Unless you’re trained in linguistics and detecting vocal qualities, you can probably no longer even tell when the voiceover you’re hearing is AI or human.
You can take advantage of AI text-to-speech programs to reduce your video and audio production costs, improve production turnarounds, and expand your reach.
Use AI to provide voiceovers for instructional videos, video ads, corporate videos, and course lessons. You can also create audio for interactive voice response systems and convert their written versions into audible content.
