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Hello and welcome to Theo's Journey podcast. My name is Anthony and this show is all about helping the new and upcoming voiceover artists grow their business and sidestep all the crazy things that moi seems to step on. Wow, you guys, it's good to be doing another podcast episode. It's February 23, 2026. I'm really excited to talk to you guys today about some. Well, gosh, there's so much to talk about. It's been a while since I put a podcast up and. But I'm really excited to be sharing this episode with you today. Going to be talking about something we've been working on at Academy Voices called Certified Human Voice. So really excited about this and let's get into it. Let's do it. This is VO Journey. With your host, the incomparable Anthony Pica. Well, well, well. We are back. I am back. How have you guys been? I hope you've been okay. I'm doing okay. I'm doing well. It has been very snowy where I am and a lot of voiceover news and stuff going on and snowy. Those two together and being sick, that has been seemingly a theme in my household over the last couple of weeks. Fortunately, God willing. And I keep knocking on wood that I have not been terribly sick. I've been holding out, but my poor daughter, she got really sick. My son got sick. He is sick right now. There's. And I know even from coast to coast, right? Because I'm always on from seeing people around the country, I guess around the world too, but the country, specifically U.S. and Canada and just people are sick left and right with the flu. I think this year, just the winter and the weather going back and forth has just been. Just been nuts. But anyways, so we're surviving and you know, we've been putting also a lot of work into Academy Voices and you know, something that really. So I want to get into this Certified Human Voice, what it is. So basically, Certified Human Voice is a certification that we give Academy Voices gives when we certify that a voice is actually human, right. Created by a human, not by AI. And we have a process that we do that, which is involves, you know, a contract, kind of pledge contract, as well as some audio analyzing. But it is something that I feel very strongly about. And the reason why is because I don't know if you guys have noticed, but, man, it seems like the more stuff I watch, the further along we get through this journey with AI it just seems harder and harder to determine what is real and what is not. Real, I mean, I think there is still, you can, you can still tell video wise sometimes if something is real or something is not real, but it is getting just better and better every single, single day. Sometimes, you know, it's hard to tell. The only, the only way I can tell maybe a video or something is not real because I can still tell. The voice seems a little too void of personality, right? Void of the general. I, I guess we could call it mistakes, but I'm going to call it the human ality. Maybe that's going to become a word, humanality. But the humanality of a voice, right, is not the same as an AI voice. But again, it's getting to the point where we're, we're going to have a hard time figuring out what's real and what's not real. And even so, down the road, I don't know if you guys paid attention to the robotics scene, but robots and AI, there was this thing going around recently where, and there it was confirmed by a couple different news outlets that they had in China had produced these robot. It was a robot show where all these, they had at least like 50 robots on stage, all powered by AI and they were doing karate, right? And they were doing like katas and stuff together and different moves and stuff. And it was confirmed that it was not like an AI video fake, but it was an actual video of robots that the robots were powered by AI doing this together. And I just, I, if you, if you believe what's coming down the pipeline with things that Musk is saying and a variety of other people who are, you know, going all in on robots, you know, in a couple of years, maybe three to five years, I mean we might have, we all might have robots in our home and you know, there might be doing all kinds of jobs, you know, blue collar jobs. Anyways, the point, the reason I was just saying all this is because I'm looking at all this stuff and I'm like, you know, there is always going to be a place for human voice, human contact, human art, because as of right now, you know what I mean, we are the creators, right? But it becomes harder down the road. Like if you pull up your social media app and you open it up and you start looking at videos, you start listening to people. If we have a hard time determining whether something is real or not, how are we going to continue or why would we continue to use these apps, these video channels, these things if we can't determine if it's real? Because think about it, what is social media? I mean, we go there. Well, many of us go there because for us listening to this, you go to social media because you're trying to grow your voiceover business, but most people use it, right, for the social aspect to see what's going on, to see what's real out there. And I think that's going to be more difficult. So I wanted to create something to where we could create a stamp, trademark, which we're doing right now, into this certified human voice so that, you know that if that stamp, those words from Academy voices is on there, that it is a human voice. And another thing I found, too, is I don't know if any of you have been caught up with this, but some newer voice actors, you kind of get thrown into a pile if you're just starting out and you're still working on getting your voice and building your craft, and you can come across, maybe your deliveries are not as full of personality yet themselves. And you. You have people saying, oh, well, that's an AI voice. And you're like, no, it's not. It's my voice, right? And you're like, wait a minute, that's. That's not an AI voice. It's me. And people are like, that's an AI voice. What are you. You know, you're trying to scam us, you know, and it was the same. It. It's gone through time, you know, through time and same sort of thing, you know, with people complaining about things not being up to par, your audio or whatever, blah, blah, blah. But the reality is, is we get stuck in this format, you know, this. This rut where they're always complaining or cut the whole conversational thing where, oh, it's not conversational, or that's not how you talk. And, like, that is how I talk, you know, And I. I think that it's going to become more and more important that we have some sort of protection beyond the law, which is, as we know, a lot of us are trying to do out there. You know, Nava's out there doing everything they can. Everybody's trying to do stuff to get this taken care of, but, you know, the laws take so long, and then they. They're not seemingly swinging in our favor as much as I would have hoped. So it's important that we do everything right now to position ourselves so that people know. And it's. For example, I was working with a client this morning. I was on a phone call with them, and they were telling me what they were looking for and that they had worked with a Lot of AI to come up with this. They have a very long standing podcast, hundreds and hundreds of episodes. And they want to want me to do the intro and outro for them and everything. And they're on the phone saying that they were using AI to try to do all this stuff and they try to use it together and they just hate it and it just doesn't work for them and they don't know what they're doing. And I think that that's another big thing too, right? Because personalization going through a real human. We are the ultimate creative, creative mind. So we're able to do things, of course, that they can't. But again, you're still going to have a hard time, especially in the shorter voiceovers, knowing what is what. So that was the theory behind creating human, certified human voice. And you know, we've already started certifying a bunch of voices on Academy Voices as well as work. And you know, we have, you know, our stamp, if you will, a certified human voice. And I think that that's going to really become something that not only helps us archive content created by humans, but also moving forward, giving people a way to choose. Because right now, if you're a listener, if you're a consumer, right, there are some things. So I will say that at least for now, I don't trust them, that it will go on forever. But at least for now, audible. And some of these places will put up AI voice or generated voice. They will put something on there that says it's not a real voice. But the problem is you don't know because you don't know if the author used an AI voice. I mean, you don't know if the book was written by AI if the author used an AI voice, because they might choose not to disclose that. In which case, how would you know if it's an AI voice or not? I mean, especially as it gets better and better and better. I mean, fortunately for long form, we've always felt AI struggles a lot because it does everything as perfectly as it can. And patterns, it struggles with manipulating the patterns, right, to make it seem that it is irregular. And you know, that humanality, as I'm using the word, it doesn't copy humanality very well because you can, we can tell, we can pick up pretty good when you, you know that an AI or a voice is going, you know, the same, the patterns are the same over time. That's why it's very difficult, I think, to listen to AI in any, any long form narration at all. But it will get better. It will get better at manipulating the patterns so everything seems more human, more, you know, not as perfectly done, you know, from A to Z. And that will begin to again challenge us as listeners and creators. So I think that it is important now that we begin to create a. And be a part of places that are promoting identifying human voice, you know what I mean? And not just doing. Because there's so many platforms who have embraced it as well. And let's be honest, AI is a tool. It is a tool, but I think that with certified human voice, that gives us the ability to say, hey, look, you can choose to listen to that voice over there, that's AI or you can choose a certified human voice and you know, without a shadow of a doubt that this is a human voice. A human voice created it, you know, and it was not done by AI. And I think that that will be super helpful for people and at least give people the knowledge that they can make a choice of their work and then down the road it can become something that they can depend on. You know what I mean? Like they listen to it or they read it, say, oh, look, this is human voice. Or I want human voice material or I want a human voice's take on it. You know what I mean? Because, you know, as, as AI Voice, who knows, a lot of it's not even written by a person anyways, you know, so, you know, you're going to make choices down the road based on that. So that's, that's a big thing that we've been working on at Academy Voices. And you know, we've published now over 500 audio books, all human voice, which is wonderful. And you know, of course that's what the plan will always be, to continue with, you know, human Voices only. What's really exciting though too is we're doing some new things. We're adding some things to the catalog, starting to work on meditations, starting to work on more series. And I'm really excited about project with an app and to move forward so that, you know, we're creating a platform that is certified human voice platform. So many of these platforms are moving, you know, forward with AI, with, you know, AI Voices, you know what I mean? And they're promoting those. A lot of the apps that you listen to, series, episodes, episodal type series, short form or things like Pocket FM now Good fm. There's a variety of different ones that do claim that they are trying to stay more human voice, human written. I'm not sure if you've listened to some of those I've been trying as I've been doing more research and listening to more of these again. And this is the challenge, right? When you don't certify something, you. You can't tell if it is really written or voiced by a human or not because you're like, well, that wasn't that. It doesn't seem like it's that good. And that's, that's the rub, right? Does being certified human voice equal a good narration? Of course not, right? I mean, like, it doesn't say certified great. And then of course, who is the arbiter of what is good and what is not good? You know, that, that's only determined by, you know, a large amount of people and what they like and they don't like. You know what I mean? And still, and that's been proven out through history that it's not always true because there's been incredible people who have done things that for that moment in time and their reach didn't do well. But then years and years later, they're considered prolific. So, you know, it's, it's definitely a challenge to tell what is real and not real on a lot of these platforms because they're not making that their focus, which is what we're going to be doing as well as creating our own native content. So we are creating our own series of things and very excited about all of that. But it's all framed around being certified human voice. So I'm interested in what you guys think about this and you know, if you're interested in being part of Academy Voices, I highly recommend you join over there. You know, VO Journey Academy, of course, is better than ever, as always. We're growing, helping so many voice actors. But, you know, Academy Voices is where we are, you know, forward facing, straight to, you know, listeners, consumers, and producing content for them so they can listen to human voices and to make sure that it's a human voice and also to make sure that the writing when, when we're doing audio, when we're doing books and, and all these things, you know, are written by people too. So it's very important. But you know, we're not doing, we're not doing a certified human written. There's many, there's many platforms or places out there, I think, who are doing something about, you know, trying to make sure that that's human done. But ours is focused on voice, of course, because we're voice actors. So definitely interested. You know, always feel free to reach out to me and share this podcast with people if you feel like, you know, this is a, a cool thing in a good direction. And we're gonna keep coming back and hitting it hard and give you some more updates about how things are going. And yeah, yeah, also, from a voiceover standpoint, I've been doing a lot of political stuff. Like I was just telling you about the, in the intros outros, the podcast. I've been doing a lot of those. So that seems to be big on the list right now. And again, you know, the politics. So keep me posted. I will talk to you guys soon. Thank you for listening, as always. Peace.