In today’s digital age, diversifying your advertising across a range of media channels is a well-recognized need for businesses of all sizes, but new technologies like voice AI are quickly challenging even the latest ways of doing so. With podcasts and online radio emerging as popular platforms for ad audiences, more companies are exploring the use of generative AI to create and personalize high-quality, self-service ads for markets worldwide. However, this new technology poses questions around the degree of need for human-powered services (e.g., voice acting) in an increasingly technology dominated landscape. These questions only extend further when the goal is to stream your content alongside podcasts in not one but multiple languages, from matters of quality assurance to how best to engage human voice actors as a creative force.
As we looked at last month, multilingual voice AI offers language service providers like CSOFT a powerful means of helping brands and businesses deliver their existing content into new target languages and regions. Meanwhile, new startups are enabling companies to automate not only secondary processes like dubbing and subtitling, but also the entire original speech content production for an audio segment, ad, or program. TechCrunch this week notes Adthos, a startup that has recently launched a platform for generating audio ads using AI, as a prime example of this trend. The platform leverages OpenAI’s GPT-4 text-producing model to create scripts for ads, as well as a library of synthetic voices, including Emmy Award-winning voice actors and talents. According to Adthos CEO Raoul Wedel, the platform’s use of AI and synthetic voices can enable advertisers to “efficiently self-service” the creation of professional-quality audio segments, thereby “supporting long-tail revenue streams” for publishers. He further notes the readiness for localization this approach presents.
However, this use of synthetic voices raises numerous questions about the vital role of voice actors. Recently, actors have been asked to grant publishers the right to use replications of their voices so that clients can use AI to generate synthetic versions that could potentially replace them. While Wedel assures that voice actors on Adthos’ platform have given their consent, the report notes it is unknown whether the full collection of voice actors in the platform’s library did actively opt into it.
As generative AI technology continues to advance, it’s essential for localization companies to ensure their support for multilingual podcast and online radio advertising translations makes the proper use of both voice actors and automation. By offering translation services that take into account cultural differences and context, translation professionals can help businesses avoid automating the production of inadvertently offensive or even harmful ads, as well as steer creative direction and cultural nuance. Moreover, voice actors are a valuable localization resource that the industry will continue to rely on with or without more efficient ways of engaging them. Ultimately, the profusion of new tools available only serves to underscore how important it is to work with a localization partner able to ensure the most responsible and effective use of generative AI technology to help your brand thrive in the digital age while minimizing inherent risks.
With a worldwide network of voice talents in hundreds of languages and technology-driven media localization solutions, CSOFT can help advertisers and other content creators efficiently publish across languages for maximum audience reach and impact. To learn more about our multilingual communication services or to get in touch with a member of our team, visit us at csoftintl.com.
[dqr_code size="120" bgcolor="#fff"]