Adapt or Die: What AI Is Doing to Human Creativity

AI is definitely changing the the voiceover industry. It already has. Um some of the more functional voiceover work is increasingly being generated by AI.

Well, especially with AI coming in, let's bring in that word right now. With AI coming in, that face to camera stuff can be done with AI.

It is useful as something that you use for as as an assistant. However, it is useful within the creative process. It helps with script refinement, for instance, for video work. AI, is it hype or help? Good day and welcome to the show. I'm your host, Pete Cooper, and our topic is AI hype or help. Today's guest is James Brown from James Brown Media. Yes, it's his own company.

He has been a journalist, a video documentary creator, and a voiceover specialist. He does work for companies that need his voice. And when you hear it, you'll understand why. But his industry has been affected quite heavily by the introduction of AI. So, this is going to be an interesting chat. Let's get into it. Good day, James. How you doing? Welcome.

Thank you for having me, Pete. Very nice to be here.

Yes. Thank you. James, you are a voice over artist, and I can tell straight away uh why are you a voiceover artist, so it's not hard for me to figure out how you got into this business, but tell us what you do and why you do it.

So, uh I am, yeah, a voiceover actor, uh and a video content creator. Uh so I do two different sides of the business uh which come together to form uh James Brown media the huge conglomerate that is but

I noticed

absolutely but yeah it's um I've started off uh the the main proponent in the business is is the voiceover side of things. Uh I've been doing that for full-time now for about four and a half five years. Uh and it really stemmed out of my broadcast journalism background which is what I was doing uh for the majority of my adult career. So I used to make documentaries, I used to present the news, um I used to be a correspondent as well.

And uh when you're doing that, of course, one of the primary skills that you have to have is you have to be able to engage an audience and you have to be able to do that um for people from all sorts of different backgrounds and tailor how you're speaking to them.

So that kind of being able to forge that kind of connection is the sort of thing that people look for when they want a voice to either represent their brand, deliver an important message, train their staff, give a character, some life or some fun or you know or to um or to make people take a certain action at the end of the day because that's also something that's that's very important if you of course you're putting together a commercial.

Great background. So journalism, um, being a a correspondent, did you So that's an overseas correspondent. I mean, I'm thinking of all of the hot spots around the world right now.

Did you get yourself into any of those sort of situations where

it was a bit uh

I had a few dicey situations. I stay I mean I was based in Russia for the vast majority of my um my professional journalism career and uh I was all over that country which is an amazing place. This was in friendlier times.

Um up to towards sort of the the early the late 2000s and the the mid 2010s which is where I was doing the majority of my work in Russia and uh it was incredible very very very interesting it's just such an enormous country you come from a tiny country like mine

um it's very very difficult to kind of conceive of the sheer size of a place like Russia but it has um over 80 different regions um I went to the vast majority of those and made films in each of them. Huge amount of different culture and uh cultural backgrounds of its people.

The vast majority of Russia is in Asia, which of course is not necessarily perhaps something you even think of when you look at perhaps say traditional Russian.

So there's a huge amount of um of different um and unusual things to see and do over there. Uh where people of course tend to associate it more with Moscow and St. Petersburg with famous rich cities,

but it's uh it's an enormous place with a great deal to see and a great deal to do. And it was

fantastic. I mean, I I I was in Finland uh and tell you about my history um in the late 90s and my wife and I were keen to go over to St. Petersburg. We never made it.

And I do regret that because it was quite close and it was very open and it was,

you know, the whole thing was opening up. I mean when did the the war the Berlin wall came down in the early 90s I think it was 91

91 yeah

and so from 91 to 98 when or 977 when I was there um I did get over to Estonia and at that stage Estonia was one of those countries that was emerging out of the Soviet block.

Um and the buildings were still a little bit run down but it was clearly on the up and um huge huge changes so much for the better for all of those countries around the Baltic states including Finland but I never got to Russia must have been you must be fascinating and you spent significant amount of time there so you really know it did this craft your voice did I mean you have a great voice James is this something you were born with or something that you've developed

I think that. Thank you very much. Uh it's it's something that you have to train in for for voice over.

It's like

there and the re the reason I say that is like some people think if you can talk you can do VO and you can pick up a mic for sure and talk into it. Um but you won't get voiceover work that way. I think that it's primarily it is about being able to communicate with an audience. If you can communicate with other people on a human level, obviously this is going to segue into something we'll talk about later.

Yes.

And that's very important because forming that connection either with a customer or with someone um watching what you do or listening of course to if you're doing something like an audio book, it's very important that you're able to draw them in and make it believable, make it interesting, make it funny. Um make it something that's worth their time,

right?

And you have to be always worth their time. M

uh and it and that takes time because you know when you if you don't know who your audience is then you can't really speak to them.

So trying to find out about like who the people you're communicating to is a big part of the of of the VO job

as is in in a lot of uh journalism work as well that you're communicating to a certain people and of course you want to retain that audience.

Yeah. And make sure that they take it in.

Yeah. That's a good point.

I think just just fundamentally marketing I think we can always make a mistake in marketing of saying well there's a huge demand out here let's just go and address that demand uh and everybody needs for example everybody needs AI let's go and market ourselves to companies that need AI and then you you diluting a message because you're not really focused on any particular audience um I definitely can resonate with that and um you so you when you're doing your voiceover work you're trying to figure that out as part of the marketing front end I guess for and a part of the service that you offer is is giving some guidance to companies that are doing this kind of content creation.

So definitely it's um it's a lot absolutely with voice over you you're you have to think about okay who are we targeting here. So, for instance, if you're doing, let's say, a if I'm doing a Hasbro commercial, then I'm targeting that to a young audience, a fun audience who needs a lot of energy and and and excitement. If I'm targeting something to these are extreme examples, I suppose, but if I'm targeting something that I know is going to appeal to um that has to appeal to an older audience, you probably turn it down. Maybe use a bit maybe you try and put some dry humor in there. Maybe you add lib a little bit.

M

um

one of the most popular styles of read is to be honest with you just like we're doing now though. It has to sound it's called the conversational read. It's supposed to be friendly. It's supposed to be believable. It's supposed to be very low pressure. Uh and it's something that uh companies love because it sounds like you're talking to a friend and that's what they want in a lot of situations.

Interesting. Well, I mean, I did a bit of face to camera work uh before we got in I got into the podcasting side of things. Uh and it was a it was suggested to me actually to do it. I didn't naturally do it.

Uh I thought the face to camera would be the better form of content, but it really didn't feel like it was working. It was actually quite difficult to script everything up and deliver it and edit it and get it up there. And I feel like, well, there's plenty of successful people doing that.

Yeah.

Can I do that, too? But I think the podcast, [sighs] well, especially with AI coming in, let's bring in that word right now. With AI coming in, that face to camera stuff can be done with AI. I mean, we've experimented with it. We've got tools that take my face.

Yeah.

Take my voice and represent that.

Um, so, uh, that's watering that that that whole segment or that category or however you describe it, that type of content, watering it down. Um, but the podcast seems to be a little bit immune to that because it is a real conversation between two people and we don't know what we're going to say to each other. I'm going to screw something up probably and maybe it's funny. Uh, maybe I say the wrong thing. But that's again that's part of what makes us human, isn't it? Is the is the elements of imperfection in it. And you you're absolutely right. It's I think that audio as a whole is a much more forgiving medium to work in than video.

Video is if you screw up a a shot, a particular shot, and you go back and you find that you've screwed it up, uh you can maybe correct it, but sometimes it simply means going back to the place where you need to shoot and shooting the thing again.

Yeah. Yeah. Whereas where whereas if I screw up a take in a when I'm doing a a book or or a character or or something else, I can just go back and record over it.

Oh, okay.

It's like, you know, it's it's a lovely forgiving uh medium that you can just you can go back and and correct your mistakes in.

Uh video, it's much harder to do that. And obviously the line the the joins are are very clear.

Not that that's actually necessarily something that back in the day of course when you were making adverts and and you had these lovely smooth and he you know big budget ads that come in and you of course you still see now on the TV and what have you but the social media ads the stuff that I do actually the UGC stuff tends to be fastpaced jump cuts uh and people don't mind that the all the lines are visible so to speak so

you know it's um it's definitely um a more I think it's a more unforgiving medium, but you can certainly you can get away with more now in video than you used to be able to.

Yeah, I um I agree with that and I noticed that too.

I get my guys to edit my stuff and there will be the head jumps all the time.

Yeah,

it seems to be that's not really a problem.

Um but um if I don't get the audio right, hence I've got the microphone. If I don't if I have bad audio, it's almost unforgiving and people just will not listen to it. So, I've got to get the audio quality right, even if the video quality isn't.

And I think for this kind of format, this podcast format, since we're right in the middle of it right now, a lot of people don't actually watch it. They listen to it. I know I'm like that. I'll be doing something outside or in the shed. Um, and I'll just have it on and I'll listen to it. I won't even watch it.

It's nice to know that there are two real people and I [clears throat] might watch it occasionally and I know it's not some manufactured AI generated content. It's real people and that's it. I then I'm off. Um

I agree. Almost almost all the podcast stuff I listen to and the long form stuff I just I listen in the car.

Yeah.

So if if I'm if if you're doing a long trip up to somewhere, then it's like, oh right, I could get an audio book done this this time because it's uh

you know, as much as it would be lovely to sit down and read a lovely big book,

don't have a great deal of time to do it these days.

No,

I can pop it on one and a half speed or something in the uh in the car and get through a decent chunk.

Yeah. Yeah. And uh I know many people do that too. And I do it as well. And we often talk about what we learned on a podcast where we were in the car, get out of my wife and I traveled up to uh upstate New York over the weekend. Did exactly that listening to some podcasts that she was interested in. Um I follow a guy in Australia called Dr. Carl. I don't know whether you know him. Famous scientists fell. Only the guy from Neighbors, but I don't think it's that one.

No, it's not that one. Guy from Neighbors. Dr. Carl. Now, I should introduce you. I think you'd like Dr. Carl.

Australian guy. He's been around since the 70s, I think, and doing this stuff in the 80s and he was on ABC TV and now he does. And he's really, really good. Really good.

Um, so you're in the UK now, right?

Yes, sir.

Okay. And what's happening in the UK right now and especially especially with regards to AI. Let's start talking about how you're being affected by AI. So AI is definitely changing the the voiceover industry. It already has. Um some of the more functional voiceover work is increasingly being generated by AI.

So there are things like internal drafts, temporary voice tracks, basic product videos, um often things that need to be produced in quite a high volume uh that that people are are looking to to use AI for. Basically, if quality isn't so much of a, you know, isn't isn't the be all and end all, I don't I understand people trying to save money.

I can understand why people would use it. Um and and they are

voice over the voiceover industry is definitely it's down. It's certainly down in volume on uh than this time last year. I don't know a huge amount of other voiceover artists who are having a particularly great 2026.

I'll admit um what it is doing is I think it makes genuinely human performance more valuable though um because when you listen to an AI voice or when you hear something it's like do you feel anything? Do you believe it? Does it make the

does it make the sentiment behind it sound distinct? Does it make does it make it sound real?

Yes. Because is it just you know a voice telling you information or is is it just a pleasant voice? Does it have any acting ability? Can it understand what it's saying?

The thing is is that fundamentally with a machine, a machine has never lived. A machine has never loved. A machine has never experienced life.

It has never it never it's never lost, never cried. It's never understood what it means to have something important happen to it and maybe having something important taken away,

right?

It doesn't have that. It can only extrapolate from what people feel into it.

Uh and that leaves gaps.

That leaves gaps that a human being um is able to fill with their own lived experience. If you add the if you add good training into that, that's where a human voiceover should be able to be a more valuable and a more useful thing for for people to keep using.

Yeah.

They also have acting ability.

You see um

e-learning and uh things for instance that are are more say like um health and safety type of things perhaps. Um

Mhm. AI does quite a lot more of those.

Not all the time, but does do some. But there's a big backlash if you try to put AI into video games.

And there's a big backlash if you try to put AI into audio books.

Interesting. People don't believe it.

Right. There is a a key word that keeps coming up in my mind. It's being relatable.

Yeah.

Um there's a famous um comedian lady who had a day show day show. She went, I forget the name of her, come to me in a minute, but she was saying, "No, we can't have.

" There was her directors and producers say, "We can't have you back. You're not relatable. " She was too wealthy.

She's too wealthy.

And so she made she did she went on tour talking about how relatable she was by talking about simple things like getting out of the shower and having to walk 20 or 30 paces across the bathroom to get to her towel. And then she put one because her feet were cold. And so she put the towel down and she So she made it very funny that she was wealthy, but she still had these very small but kind of trivial little human um things that we can all relate to. Getting out of the shower and walking across the tile floor with cold feet.

Absolutely.

Something we enjoy. We throw a towel down.

Yes.

But she made it relatable even though she was very wealthy and I thought it was very clever what she did.

You're exactly right. I mean, there's no consequences to an AI generated voice. It can say anything and and get away with it. Okay, you don't like what it said. Let's delete the instance and immediately there's another instance there

from a human being. I I have consequences to what I do.

I mean, I understand that for instance, I react in a certain way to AI

that it's like, oh god, I can tell, you know, and I can tell quickly. I But I don't think that is just me.

And I think that there's like I I go on to um videos on YouTube for instance and then you'll see either and and I you can hear it's an AI voice because it just doesn't it doesn't move enough. There's not enough there's not enough variety in anything that's coming through. Um or you go on to Facebook or whatever and then up pops an AI ad. The ones that I see all the time at the moment, I don't they've probably made their way over the Atlantic.

May even have started there are things like for for blo uh who are about like our age I would say uh it's it's either military calisthenics that they want you to do or tai chi chair

exercises and it's either a a monk who's been carved from stone or a gi who's been you know carved out of a brick uh and and it's inevitably some disappointed wife sort of looking at her husband and who's got fat he's got AI fat and he's like and he just gets s give me 28 days and of course in 28 days as we all know he then just turns into a a six-pack

oh yes monster god cuz he's done his chair

chair tai chi and of course it's very very believable but it's like oh god I I wonder if they sell I I

genuinely do because it's just like you what is this it's so funny.

Yeah. Well, I mean there's this thing I mean we watch the conflict that's going on, you know, between Ukraine and Russia and they keep talking about this quantity has a quality of its own. And maybe that's the philosophy here. You can produce so much quantity of AI generated content so cheaply that in a way it kind of starts to cut through and have a quality of its own.

Yeah.

In terms of something to mock of those things. Yes, for sure. Um, I think that there's I mean AI will replace things like the where you need something inexpensive and you need something functional.

Uh, and most most of my fellow VOS uh understand that. Uh, and because it doesn't help with any of us to bury our our heads in the sand. Um, it is useful as something that you use for as as an assistant. However,

it is useful within the creative process. It helps with

script refinement, for instance, uh, for for video work.

It's something that you can feed ideas into and get some ideas to bounce back. There's it it helps with um social media ideas. It can help kind of if you have a block, it can give you a nudge.

It can also help organize things and it it removes certain repetitive work and you can then spend more of the time that adds genuine value

which is should be your interpretation, your creativity and adding adding that connection.

So it's

generative AI is a bit different though and that's can be used obviously they get used all the time but it is essentially theft of other people's work that's just been scripted

of

so it's possible for someone to take your voice even your face right and and replicate you

and it looks to to the casual observer

um that it's you uh with your great voice and everything and and it's very hard to stop that happening right because your content out there

and that's

yeah it is it's very hard and obviously thing and things do get scraped and I've had colleagues who've ended up on um places like Fish Audio um

there are quite highprofile cases that Equity and Sagatra are

fighting um at the moment with a number of people who've had their voices cloned

uh without their permission

and I mean it's serious stuff because you you you're taking somebody's livelihood away Um it's not it's no joke. So there's you can license your own voice of course you can do that with um certain AI companies and produce one which you then have control over that's different. Um, but if it's just nicked, put onto the web and then someone just starts using it and calling it you. That's the thing. Of course, it's is you end up, right, this is James Brown's voice or this is um whoever's voice

and you you then pass it off as them.

Yeah.

Course and there's no compensation for that. So,

yeah. Yeah.

It's so disruptive too, isn't it? I mean coming from the tech side of things with software and we've seen this incredible reduction in the cost of building out software. It used to be the case that that building of the portal or the software was the moat like the building of it was so expensive and difficult that that was the reason you existed as a company. That's almost gone now. So, so because you can literally look at that portal and get AI in a short period of time, let's call it a weekend to replicate what's already there. And then you've got you got your company there competing directly with them.

Um, that's enormously disruptive. Um, and your world is also being shaken

shaken up. But you said something that I wanted to focus on and that was there is a an area which is I think you should use the words highquality content

which still requires um a person a real person. How would you define this highquality content? Where's it used?

You need you need great storytelling

to make something connect properly. I think so. I think the tech can improve a delivery. It can make content look better and and sound better.

But if you've got if you're telling the message in a confusing way, uh an irrelevant way or a way that the emotion isn't coming through, then it's dead anyway,

right?

So you can tart something up, but if you don't know how to tell a story in a way that that people will want to listen to, then you are then you cannot deliver a uh you cannot deliver a message properly and people won't listen to you.

So it's you know it's quite simple. It's foundations. You've got to understand the audience, identify what they care about, and give them a reason to keep listening to the very end.

That's what you need.

Do you think that AI could solve that problem of of storytelling?

I don't think so. Because again, I don't think it can deliver information,

but it can't act.

It can't. That's why people don't want it in video games. They don't want it in their world building. They don't want it in things like Warhammer. They don't want it in their fantasy epics. They don't want it in that because it doesn't work. Because the whole point of that is the escapism. The idea that you are creating something otherworldly that you are using your imagination. AI does not have imagination. Doesn't have it.

You cannot do it.

In a way, it has the opposite to imagination.

I have this thought in mind I often use as an analogy where you it's a kind of almost an averaging effect. Everything's going towards uh because there's so much information and it's largely a predictive engine. What is the next word in an LLM case? What is the next word? The cat sat on the mat. Everything isn't going to be the mat. Maybe the cat sat on the dog. Maybe the cat sat on the chair, you know, and they So this is this kind of averaging effect which forces everything down one one I guess it's kind of like a hive mind a little bit scary in the sense. Are we all just heading around towards some point where we all think the same, do the same, act the same because we're following the AI.

Oh well, this is this another topic, isn't it? It's like kind of is m is AI making us dumber because we type everything into ChatGPT to to give us the answers, you know, whereas you it's are we losing the ability to critically think. That is worrying because I mean it really because it's just so it's so easy.

It's just so easy like to to get that out of and if we never have to solve problems, we will end up getting more stupid because the brain won't take the harder option deliberately.

Y

it's found a way to make its life easier. Yeah.

So that's but but you do need to sharpen it with with hard work and with thought because if you don't you end up getting dementia.

Uh and it's it's just simply proven that if you don't use it you lose it.

Yeah.

To keep using it. It's very very very dangerous to to end up like you know physically of course as well. It's

if you stop exercising and you start getting into middle age and older age, you find that everything starts hurting more. I mean, it will start hurting more anyway, but it hurts more quicker and things go wrong faster and then you end up weak and miserable. And you know, if you end up weak, miserable and with your brain in a not not having been used as much as it's supposed to, it's you know, it's a wonderful muscle. It's what makes us us, isn't it?

Yeah.

That's the that's the thing that it's just it's very and it's very tempting to use it all the time, but you and just feed everything into it and say, "Okay, well, make me 2, 000 LinkedIn posts and off you go. I'll never have to do social media again. " But again, it doesn't work because it's like it's just too obvious and there's no and there's and and people don't, well, this this isn't anything to do with you. He just

this doesn't tell me anything really. I can tell that you didn't you have zero in input into this except just typing in that prompt.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah.

Uh I I I took on some stuff recently and uh

they would send me I would say look write me up a plan to do such and such. And the next day I would get a plan uh in pages and pages with m dashes and all through it

and I'd say did you use AI to generate this and they would say yes and I'd say well that's fine okay let's go through it and see if you actually understood what you what was created and sometimes they wouldn't know what it was that what the words actually said. I said look I want you to use AI because it's so helpful but you have to understand every single word in that report before you give it to me because I can do the same thing.

In fact, I can do that job much better than you by prompting AI and getting a report or a plan. You have to use your brain to make sure that this what you're giving me is good stuff. And we got over that. So, we were able to get the the result without and leveraging what I'm saying is leveraging AI, not relying on AI to do the work.

I think that's where the future is. Um

I don't disagree with you with that and it's as a sort of virtual assistant for some tasks. Um coordinating leads for instance and lead generation actually I I find that it's been very very helpful. I think that with creative stuff, like I say, I think it's good as a as something to give you a kick in the ass.

Uh, if I'm allowed to say that on your podcast, but it's it shouldn't replace you as the primary driver of of what goes into your your content

because then it just it loses its heart and it loses its soul and it it just becomes you get into the AI slop sort of thing which people are people don't want to see. They're not interested in it. There's too much of it already. It's too obvious and and it isn't working.

Yeah.

In terms of selling to people. So,

yeah. So, information delivery was something that you think is is bringing the cost of that down um rather than here's where I'm going with this. I'm thinking I want to listen to James Brown. I want to watch a podcast.

I want to watch a video from James Brown, but I want to know what he feels when he's in, you know, Siberia in in the middle of winter.

And that I want to relate to that. I want him to relate to me what it feels like to be in Siberia in the middle of winter

as a human being with all of our aches and pains and all of our suffering.

And that's what I'm going to be drawn to. I don't want an AI bot giving me information about the temperature and the strength of the wind and whatever information

there is. It's to me it's that related experience which is so so very important for us as humans. I think

I agree.

It's um yeah, otherwise you wouldn't [sighs] that's what makes those uh those documentaries and what have you and survival documentaries so compelling because I suppose it's putting it may not necessarily be relatable to be stuck out on a desert island or whatever but you can see um people going through that is is an incredible watch.

Of course it is because it's like wow it's taking the it's the limit of human endurance or human experience what we can actually do you know we're pretty amazing as a species you know we do still keep wanting to advance ourselves and you know athletes keep getting faster and uh people are still drawn to create things and uh

writers still want to write in many ways there's still a lot of things in the brain that that people want to get out there

yeah and I think we

thankfully there is We're I mean I always think of you know the caveman in going back to sort of you know the uh being mammals and being I guess apes being tribal right.

Yeah.

Having that need just for survival to be in a troop. A monkey on his own can't live like a chimpanzee gets banished they die. Um it's the troop that binds us. So we've developed over millions of years to rely on each other to need each other and to figure each other out so we can cooperate and coordinate in harmony so we survive. Um and I think that's not going anywhere. And I think AI cannot cannot do that. Cannot give us that that without without us changing our brain somehow, we're going to always need to have other people and been able to relate to them and all those other things that makes us social.

Yeah,

I think it's vital.

I mean, it's like, you know, you can't use AI to kill a saber-tooth tiger, can you?

Spears.

There are these robots that Elon Musk is creating.

Oh, maybe you can now. You just send up a drone, I suppose. Maybe it could kill a poor tiger.

Yeah. Poor saber to know what's coming.

Yeah. No.

Yeah. So, um I I like to go back to to pre- internet because I was around before the internet and and so was I.

And I'm going to bring you up to before AI and to what I used to say.

So, here's a story. When I wanted to know something, let's say I want to know the biggest ship in the world, I'd ask my mom. She wouldn't know. My dad wouldn't know. They would say, "Go and find a book.

" I wouldn't have a book. I'd go to the library and I would spend my lunchtime trying to find a book about the biggest ship that existed, asking my friends, nobody knows. Maybe I would find it if I spent my whole instead of running around with my mates and having my lunch and having a good time, I would find that little piece of information. Before AI, all I had to do was type into Google or a search engine and I would have that answer within seconds. Uh, that was a long way to come right from there to there. Now it's now from from there to now it's even easier, right?

It's it's I don't even have to with prei I used to have to type the question into Google and I'd have to go and search a few pages.

Now it's even easier than that. I can ask it any question and it'll come back with an answer.

Access to information has taken another big leap forward and I think it comes back to your point. When it comes to information, AI is really useful.

Yes. Yes.

But when it comes to these other things we're talking about, social connection, the need to be relatable, the need to tell a story, that's where we still need people.

Yes.

Yeah,

I agree. And then and you and even so, it took a long time for us to get to that to get to the libraries, didn't it?

Then we're only going back 2, 000 years,

right? If it's uh 4, 000 years to when people started inscribing information onto the you know to onto tablets and papyrus then offices

and a lot of that information was lost through conquest and uh things throughout history and then we started to collect it more and more. We only got the first dictionary, didn't we, in the 18th century.

And

you know that that took thousands of years of human evolution for us to get to that point. And really in the last 20,

look what's happened.

Yeah.

It's quite it's it's mind-blowing because it's gone on a very slow trajectory and then it's just suddenly gone

almost vertical. Yeah.

In terms of of what we've been able to

um gain access to and produce. So, you and I, I think [clears throat] you're a little bit younger than me, James. You've been flattering through this. Um, but what about young people that are coming in now with

access to AI from the get-go?

Yes.

What's happening to them? Because you and I grew up without AI and perhaps without the internet.

I mean,

well, I mean, I I have two boys. Uh, so my my littlest boy is only one and a half, so he's not using too much AI at the moment, but my my 10-year-old um he is he's using some in school.

Um, and he talks to ChatGPT when he So, he like uh like me and a lot of other kids loves his video games. Mhm.

Um, and he creates these scenarios using ChatGPT sometimes, um, into these wild stories that feature Sonic and Mario and, uh,

and Diary of a Wimpy Kid and they all come together in this sort of crazy

Yeah.

hybrid of a tale. And of course, he has enormous fun with that. And that's a lot of, you know, that's a lot of fun in terms of like creating something. Um

so he he uses the voice prompt on ChatGPT and he he prompts it with his ideas and it creates these stories with

he creates the story scenarios. Yeah. Yeah.

It creates those scenarios for him and it can do it in seconds.

He's a natural storyteller then. Right.

Yeah.

Absolutely. Lots of the big imagination. So

a chip off the old block would you say then?

I don't know. Uh he's he's one of a kind is my dad. That's good. That's wonderful. So, that's a really positive story. I like to hear that. I mean, I I too, you know, if I sort of got something on my mind, I want I don't want to burden other people with it. I just want to hear some feedback. It's almost therapeutic uh to have that exchange with uh ChatGPT on the voice.

[clears throat] M

don't don't get me wrong I use AI very frequently very very frequently I I I find it very useful in terms of organization and things like that creating like um schedules

planning um it's there are tools there that are great in terms of try helping me find for instance people that I might want to connect with or reach out to to say hopefully you know I can do a human voiceover or make a for that'll that'll help your brand.

Um, that's very helpful and it saves an enormous amount of time. And of course, like a lot of creative people that that sort of side of things, it's not very fun. Um, we we want to be doing the fun stuff. We like it. So, it ways to cut that down.

Um, you take it for sure. Um, and it's certainly a useful way to to cut down

in the business.

Um, and it's AI can just be like the thing is is that there's there's a real person on the other side of the screen. Um, and they're giving you some of their attention and you you have to respect that. So it's when you are using your AI tools, it's not necessarily like sort of what can this AI tool create? The first question should be what does this person need from me?

Oh yes, I like that. Yeah.

You see, so the AI may then be able to to help you communicate that answer a bit more quickly.

Um but the the message has to be thinking about like what's what's important for my end audience here. M yeah. Yeah, I agree. James, we're almost running out of time here. Um, do you have any questions or comments that you want to make before we wrap up?

Um, no. I I I think we've covered a lot of bases there to be honest with you. I do think it's a very interesting um topic and like I say for it's a worry for a lot of people in my industry. It is because some people are being some people 100% are being forced out. There's fewer uh there's fewer the lower end of the market is certainly being chopped at by AI. Um

right. Okay.

But ideally, if you hopefully have put yourself in a position or you're trying to put yourself in a position to appeal to um to better clients and you have a service which is proven to either to sell or to connect or to create that that bond with the listeners, you you can concentrate on finding the the clients that still want that uh that human service. So

yeah,

in terms of sort of perhaps pushing you to the

to bigger um bigger and better things, it does have that effect in again with a lot of things you you have to adapt or die.

Yeah. Yeah.

I do I I do about 70% voiceover now and about 30% video.

Okay.

So that's come in.

It's something that obviously was there um from the journalism days and the days in front of the camera. I'm kind of adding in the the user generated content, video and ads as something that sort of for me at least puts most of my skill set to use as opposed to just one piece.

Right?

So it forces you to it has forced me to adapt and it forces a lot of us to to adapt. Adapt or die, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah.

Adapt or die. So fun final question for you James. AI is it hype or help? Uh, I think it's I think it can be a very powerful help. Um, there's hype around it because

I think that some businesses use AI because they feel that it's it's trendy. It's very it's nice to be seen.

I'm not sure that all the things that they put in improve the customer's experience. You know, your wonderful chat bots and things like that which inevitably end up with being you just type in human again and again as it ignores your question. Um, and it can put in a lot of generic content because it's so easy to produce. Um,

if you use it to if you use it for admin purposes, if you use it to um tidy up, if you use it to create lists um and spreadsheets that you can then go and use your own creativity to to link up with people to offer them something that makes them want to, for instance, open your email, read the email, and reply to you.

Yeah. Then then it's very useful. Yeah.

Um

right.

Is it effective though? I suppose is efficient but is it effective? It can't at the end of the day make people care and that requires some insight, understanding and humanity.

Yeah, that's a great answer, James. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll have to have you back and do some more of this stuff. This was a lot of fun. Um

my pleasure. If you want to stick around after the show, we'll wrap up a couple of things.

Sure.

But, uh,

thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me, Pete.

Well, that was great and a lot of fun talking to James and I think you can tell from his voice why he's a voice over artist.

A few things to summarize the conversation. Number one, AI is having an impact on his business. And the way he summarized it is if you need to do high quantity of delivery of content then AI is a good tool but if you want high quality then you need people. So he's distinguishing himself with his voice and his skills and aiming for a different market. Another key area was cloning. So there are people do using AI in a nefarious way to clone people's voices. Cloning their their face and rebuilding um channels and using them uh illegally. Now, it's not the same as licensing where someone can certainly license their voice and their face. This is a nefarious activity that is being born out of AI.

And finally, one of the ways of using AI um versus versus people is the difference between delivering content for information. For example, some training material, maybe some HR material or something that needs to be created by video that can be done quite well with AI. But when it comes to um relating experiences uh from humans or storytelling or entertainment, then we agreed that humans are definitely a favorite option. If you want to know more about James Brown and what he does, I'll leave some links in the description. If you want to know more about Skillion, please do the same. I hope that helps and thanks for watching.