Will robots ever replace the traditional voice over? Will artificial intelligence ever reach a stage where machines are able to understand the complexities and nuances of human speech?

It sounds like something from the minds of James Cameron and Stanley Kubrick, but the race for AI supremacy is already being run by the world’s largest technology providers. Earlier in August, in fact, Facebook had to shut down an AI engine after it began communicating with itself and creating its own language.

A great voice over can make any product more relatable to your consumer. For more information on how voice over artists can benefit your brand, read our blog: Win consumer trust with professional voice over talent.

An almost-sentient chatbot that communicates with itself sounds like pretty scary stuff… but there’s nothing to worry about (yet). It’s things like this though, that are the perfect reason why marketers, developers, translation professionals and others should put their faith in a professional, experienced voice over artist as part of their communications strategy.

What voice over talent provides that AI cannot

Imagine you’re a campaign manager looking to get a point across to a targeted audience. You need a specific voice over strategy using the right voice artist who can bring your brand to life. The right voice over talent can experience your brand, or product, and deliver a message filled with passion, excitement and real understanding.

Can a machine, or even a specially-designed piece of software do that? And will it ever be able to do it at a level that spells the end for the traditional voice over artist?

Not at all, according to a wide array of experts and industry professionals, who point out that machine translation is still at a stage where search engines and smartphones can only get the basic gist of text entries.

Hardware manufacturers including Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Google would have you believe that their personal assistants are set to be in every home in the foreseeable future, communicating with people via voice over technology to perform certain tasks.

Even if it worked perfectly though, is it something the market’s desperate for? Perhaps not, according to a survey from Creative Strategies which says that though virtually every iPhone owner has tried its Siri feature at least once, 70% say that they use the function sometimes or rarely

Convey real emotion with a human voice over

According to the same survey, there are numerous reasons why people aren’t embracing Apple’s Siri. For example, 20% of subjects interviewed said they don’t like talking to virtual assistants in public places. Another reason that AI voice technology may struggle to be fully mainstream is that people, naturally, prefer human contact and may feel a bit unsettled talking to a machine, at all.

A perfectly understandable point; no matter how advanced the technology may become, nothing will beat the natural factors of real, human conversation. The ability to understand the complexities of linguistic detail, context, emotional cues, tone of voice, speech rhythms and dialect, are all essential in our verbal communications

A voice over artist vocalizing a brand with genuine feeling is a much more personal experience than an automated voice. The clue is in the name – artificial intelligence. Your target audience doesn’t want an artificial experience, they want to relate to the person who is communicating with them. Using a voice over with an engaging tone and appropriate style will make your brand feel honest and human.

That point is so crucial to understand from a marketing perspective, too. As beneficial as a robot may be to certain tasks, it pays to be human in your communications. With a voice over agency, you can deliver powerful messages to your target audience in a way that brings your brand to life. A professional voice over talent, recorded in a controlled studio environment ensures not only top-quality sound, but support to create the strongest possible audio campaign.

By considering factors such as age, gender, regional accent and tone, a professional voice over agency will help you to create an authentic user experience with a voice over that AI can’t match.

There’s nothing artificial about our service. We’re Voice Talent Online; get in touch today to find out more about how we can help you reach new customers with over 1,500 voice talents fluent in more than 75 languages.

A great voice over can make any product more relatable to your consumer. For more information on how voice over artists can benefit your brand, read our blog: Win consumer trust with professional voice over talent.