A while ago, I decided to transfer my Medium essays to YouTube. I used AI voices to narrate them. I did this for various reasons. However, on YouTube, almost all the comments have been negative, and nearly all focused exclusively on my use of AI voices.
Not a single critic so far has commented on the quality of the AI voices I use. Instead, they have a problem with the use of AI itself. Indeed, even if the voices were perfect, I suspect that they’d still have a problem.
I’ve also asked my critics if they like audio books, which, of course, aren’t AI voices. I don’t think they have a problem with the quality of the AI voices I choose, but with the very fact that I’m using AI voices. So the audiobooks are narrated by people who didn’t write the books. That doesn’t matter, as long as they ain’t AI.
What’s more, no critic has ever got around to asking me why I use AI voices. For all they know, I might have throat cancer, or a strong stutter, etc. As it is, I use AI because I have a very strong regional (i.e., northern English) accent, and I doubt that many viewers would understand me very well, certainly not if they’re American. I’m also not very confident vocally.
I personally believe that the voices on Medium are very good. (Some are better than others.) As far as I know, there are only five voices to choose from. Medium uses Speechify for its voices.
So I didn’t see it as being a big crime against human persons to use AI voices.
Sympathy With My Critics
I can guess at some of the reasons as to why my critics take such an strong stance against my use of AI voices. More broadly, this probably reflects a problem with AI “taking over”. After all, surely using an AI voice is much worse than an AI machine making the boxes or dildos which were previously made by human persons.
Some of my critics may believe that it’s inauthentic or even misleading to use AI voices. This is especially the case if they believe that my content is AI-generated too. This is odd. The critics seem to be implicitly admitting that they can’t tell the difference between AI-generated content and human-created content.
Personally, I believe that I can often spot AI-generated content, especially when it comes to news and politics channels on YouTube. The prose style is over-the-top and embarrassingly titillating. That said, this isn’t something I can prove.
In more detail. AI-content on YouTube (e.g., using ChatGPT) is often generic and repetitive. Apparently, this is called “AI slop”. So my viewers may simply assume that my content is AI-generated too.
The problem is even worse.
Take what is now called “AI Misinformation”. This, again, may excuse at least some of my critics. In addition, on Reddit there’ve been debates about YouTube’s “enshitification”. However, without being grand, I doubt that most of my critics actually spent much time on my videos. To put it bluntly, they probably clicked the video, heard the AI voice, and that was that!
Of course, I could be lying, and my content is, in fact, AI-generated!
Philosophy
My Medium essays are on philosophy. Therefore my YouTube videos are on philosophy too.
Philosophy is about ideas, arguments, concepts, data, etc. So surely using an AI voice should matter less when it comes to philosophy. It can be seen that using AI voices may not work when it comes to counselling videos (which will require empathy) or even politics. Perhaps if I were an existentialist, or a political philosopher, or a “philosopher of life”, then what I’ve said about counselling and political videos would also apply here too. As it is, in my essays “lived experience” or the “first person” plays a minimal role. Indeed, the closer I can get to Spock or Grok the better. Of course, this could be massive self-deceit on my part… But that’s not the issue here.
(*) This is one of my essays on YouTube.
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