It’s not that far fetched an idea to suggest that computers with text to speech and talking avatar capabilities may one day put an end to the voice over artist. Radio stations around the world are already replacing radio presenters with automation and voice tracking. A computer can take care of all the tasks a DJ can do, such as playing the music, firing off jingles, hitting the news on time and even making a cup of coffee! Not to even mention Google and Alexa machines. So, why not use a computer as your station voice? I may be doing myself out of a job… but look at some of the great websites and technologies that already exist.
Free Text to Speech
AT&T have a great free text to speech radio jingle generator. You can play with the different voices and create something that sounds quite realistic in various languages and accents. You can use the website as much as you’d like as long as it’s for private, non-commercial use. Here’s a demo radio jingle I mixed up using text to speech:
Siri, Adobe Audition and more
Here is my most recent attempt at playing around with the most recent technologies including Siri, Generate Speech in Adobe Audition as well as Voice RSS.
Challenges for Machines
The problem with text to speech is that you can’t direct the voice as you can with a real, live voice over talent. It’s always going to sound very monotone and sometimes the sound produced just doesn’t feel right. You can’t ask for “a longer pause there” or “more enthusiasm on that word”.
Talking Avatars
Another great website that provides talking avatars that convert text to speech so that you can have a talking website character is SitePal. It’s amazing what you can do with this neat technology. It’s like having a real person on the front of your website to welcome your visitor in and guide them around. Avatars could well be voice over stars of the future!
Nah When I'm doing voice over people ask me for specifics in the way things are said – the intonation and timbre.
True Kevin but it does seem that text-to-speech voices are becoming more and more human like in their delivery. Time will tell!
It really doesn’t matter how good/flexible TtS is, it will get used. There have always been bottom fishers that just want to make more money for themselves, and they will not hesitate to use this technology to save the cost of people. They are already voice tracked and sound like crap, but still have some listeners anyway. So why not save even more money?