What Marketers and Voice Actors Actually Need to Adopt Voice Clones for Ads and Content

New demo and solution debut

Voices.com is the largest global marketplace for voiceover talent. It is used by over 500,000 businesses to purchase services from four million voiceover artists. The company has recently launched a new solution in beta that enables voice actors to create voice clones and market that product on voices.com alongside their traditional, live recording work. Clients can then purchase those services from the voice actor or their voice clone.

Dylan Richardson, Voices.com senior product manager, chose the Synthedia 3 Generative AI Innovation Conference to demo this software for the first time publicly. And this demo had a different emphasis than the typical Synthedia audience presentation. Richardson showcased the technology and how voice actors are creating high-quality synthetic voice clones on the Voices.com platform. However, the more intriguing elements were the process, workflow, and commerce elements.

For marketers, using a voice clone for an ad or other content production is more complicated than simply downloading a synthetic voice file. They have to think about legal rights, channels, documentation, and other considerations. This is particularly true when contracting for a voice clone from a professional voice actor.

Voiceover artists also have key requirements that a general marketplace is not set up to address. For example, they may not be able to work with certain clients because of exclusivity deals or be unwilling to be associated with specific product categories for moral reasons. There are also different compensation rates for different uses.

Consent, Credit, and Compensation

Voices.com built its new solution and features around the concepts of consent, credit, and compensation. According to Voices.com:

The creator needs to give explicit consent to a platform or company to have their data used, and there should also be clarity on how their data is used. In the case of voice over, the voice over artist should know that their voice is being used to train an AI. They should ensure that their voice will be used in ways they deem appropriate, and words that their clone is expected to say will align with their personal values.

Creators should be credited for work and data of theirs that are used to train these algorithms.

Creators should be compensated for work and data of theirs that are used to train these algorithms. For voice over artists, compensation might be arranged on a per project basis, or if providing a branded voice for one company, remuneration on an annual contract, with terms around the licensing and use of the voice.

This transparency and clarity around use and rights is also critical for the buyers of voiceover services. The rules built into the platform for purchasing synthetic AI voices needs to mirror many of the same considerations that are requirements—and taken for granted—when hiring the human voice actor for the work.

You will find some of the use cases in the demo interesting. They highlight that the technology innovation is only the first step in the path to adoption. Business and process requirements are just as important.

Changing Sentiment

Voices.com first offered to connect clients with synthetic voices in 2019, but most marketers still preferred the quality and emotion that could only be delivered by a live recording of a human voice actor. That sentiment may still hold, but other factors have led to experimentation with synthetic voices.

In a 2023 survey, Voices.com found that 41% of voiceover talent customers had experimented with AI or text-to-speech (TTS) voices, and 44% were motivated by the need to download a voice instantly. Over 60% of those users “would consider using an AI voice for future projects.”

At the same time, while voice actors were strongly opposed to voice clones in 2019, some of that sentiment has shifted. One voiceover artist recently told Vocies.com that they have decided to create an AI voice clone, “to extend my market to jobs I wouldn’t otherwise have time to audition for, and to evolve my offerings in this time of change.”

There has been a lot of speculation that the rising quality of synthetic voices will take work from voice actors. That may be true to some extent. However, some voice actors now recognize that their voice clone can execute an unlimited number of jobs without any time constraint. It also will enable them to charge different rates for the voice clone and the live recording which may raise their overall income. And, the rise of easy-to-access voice clones and high-quality synthetic voices may lead to an increase in work for the industry overall.

Voices.com’s perspective and solution are also worth a look as you consider how generative AI solutions are evolving from technical promise to practical business tools.