hey I'm Hank iseria I'm here at the New

York Times to discuss whether uh AI can

replace

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me I do many voices mostly on The

Simpsons like motor bartender sing on or

police chief wium suspect is heartless

repeat heartless or snake um the

convict I'm taking this thing to Mexico

or Professor Frank of course the

scientist at superintendent chelmer one

of my personal favorites y the old sea

captain y Duff Man Of course Duff man

purveyor of Duff

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beer hi this is Hank is area I'm in some

mysterious undisclosed location of the

New York Times building I'm recording my

voice and we're going to see how AI can

recreate it and see how closely it can

match or not

okay this is Hank aaria I am not

actually Hank I am a bot and AI do you

think this actually sounds like me it

mispronounced my name I'm aaria not

aaria it felt like what it was which was

just um a vocal version of printed text

hey there this is mot bartender speaking

to you how will I describe my clientele

uh SLE bags uh scumballs um jerk wads uh

morons all of them

apply this is Mo the bartender you

should come to my Pub sometimes and have

a

Duff now was way

off um it doesn't have enough gravel in

it and it's missing uh lot of sounds

that Mo should make it's not here it's

here if we were trying to sound like a

robot that would be a pretty good

version of what we were trying to

do I didn't really think about AI

seriously in terms of voice acting until

about a year or two ago obviously the

Scarlett Johansson thing Scarlet

Johansson saying this voice used by open

ai's virtual assistant Sky Hello I'm

really excited about teaming up with you

sounds quote eerily similar to her own I

think there's a humanness that the AI

can't do right now at least vocally and

may never be able to do that involves a

character's motivation certain emotions

uh subtleties of physicality facially or

otherwise that add up to a human

being the biggest misconception people

have about voice acting is that it's

from the neck up but your body has to

get into it if I'm running and I have

dialogue it's easier just to be running

okay hmer I'm coming all right there I'm

getting tired I'm going to stop running

now okay Homer as soon as I get this

wood chopped I'll be there right with

you I hope that there's Donuts afterward

you got to kind of do it you know what I

mean stick something in your mouth that

makes the the cigar in your mouth sound

quite convincing now cigars I wouldn't

actually put one in my mouth but a pen

is perfectly fine actually this is

slightly gross I'm going to take it

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out people are going to listen to and

enjoy and watch what they like and

they're not going to care whether AI

generated it or human generated it or

some combination of the two right now

what AI generates by itself as motor

bartender or anything else isn't going

to cut it but if it does start to cut

it people are going to listen to it and

they're going to be grateful that it's

so readily available like what happened

you know to the music industry one thing

I cried a tear because the record

industry reinvented itself I got to

listen to all the music for free all of

a sudden so I don't I don't think people

are going to feel much differently about

any of this