15 August 2024
The Dissonance Quadrilogy: Aaron Ryan's Voice Acting & Authorship in an AI World (258) - E258
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Welcome to episode 258 of the Digital Marketing Masters podcast with your host, Matt Rouse. In this episode, we are joined by Aaron Ryan, a celebrated voice actor and author of The Dissonance Quadrilogy. We dive into Aaron's extensive career in voice acting, which began in 1993, and discuss how the rapid advancements in AI technology are impacting the industry. Aaron shares his insights on the commoditization of voice-over work, the challenges posed by AI-generated voices, and his transition to becoming a full-time author.
Aaron talks about the emotional nuances and unique qualities that human voice actors bring to their work, which #AI still struggles to replicate. We also explore the ethical and creative implications of AI in the arts, including writing and music. Aaron emphasizes the importance of embracing one's unique talents and adapting to industry changes while staying true to one's creative passions.
We also touch on the practical aspects of self-publishing, the challenges of marketing books in a saturated market, and the importance of maintaining creative control. Aaron shares his rapid publishing timeline and the passion that drives his storytelling. Whether you're an aspiring voice actor, author, or just curious about the intersection of AI and creativity, this episode offers valuable insights and inspiration.
Don't miss this engaging conversation filled with practical advice, personal anecdotes, and a deep dive into the future of creative industries in the age of AI.
** Aaron knows we use a digital voiceover when talking about my book at the end of the show. Don't call me out, it's both ironic and designed to show the future we are moving to while most are unaware. Go read "Will AI Take My Job?" Available on Amazon.
Dissonance Quadrilogy by Aaron Ryan
Hook Digital Marketing
(00:03) Introduction and Guest Overview
(00:46) Impact of AI on Voice Acting
(04:22) Challenges in the Voice Over Industry
(10:35) AI in Creative Fields
(20:38) Adapting to Industry Changes
(28:12) Writing and Publishing Books
(39:28) Music and AI
(44:06) Closing Remarks
[00:00:03]
Narrator AI:
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Masters podcast with your host, Matt Rouse. Digital Marketing Masters, episode 258 with Aaron Ryan. Aaron, how are you today?
[00:00:17] Aaron Ryan:
Doing well. Thanks. How are you doing? I am doing fantastic.
[00:00:21] Narrator AI:
You are a celebrated voice actor, but also the author of The Dissonance Quadrilogy. Yes. Which I managed to say for the first time since we were talking. Probably. Book series looks super interesting. I'm also writing a fiction book, so that's kinda how we connected. Then you were talking about, you know, AI and your voice acting career. So, I mean, I think we have lots to talk about. You know, the first thing I think would be when when it comes to the voice acting side, and you talk about how AI is kind of affecting that industry. Do you wanna talk about that and we can we can just kind of have a little conversation about AI and voice overs? Yeah.
[00:01:07] Aaron Ryan:
Well, I've been doing voice overs since 93, and obviously, the industry has changed and evolved and grown and and contracted and shrunk as with any industry. With with the implementation of AI that's just become so prolific and widespread, especially growing by leaps and bounds in 2023, it's really impacted the the voiceover industry. There are very, very well renowned and beloved colleagues of mine who are making their own exodus from the VO industry after many years as a, you know, celebrated, as you put it, voice artist. And so it's nipping at the corners, or I should say it was nipping at the corners. Now it's actually starting to, you know, get more of an appetite and devour certain genres of voice overs. It's what's pushed me back into wanting to be a full time author. I've been authoring for years years, but this is my exit strategy from from voice overs. People are buying, you know, 29, 49, $79 software packages like SpeechHello and SpeechOcean that will, you know, synthesize a voice and create entire commercial spots, radio, TV, broadcast spots, whatever.
And clients are are are buying that instead of interacting with human beings that emote, that enunciate, that, have the idiosyncrasies and nuances that we all have that software can't replicate. So it's really sad.
[00:02:27] Narrator AI:
I think when it comes to AI and the voice over industry, I think people were surprised at how quickly it went from, like, oh, this thing sorta sounds like a person now to, like, wow, this actually sounds like a person, and it's kind of hard to distinguish until you get the the idea of emoting. Yeah. But even that, I mean, there's just another system came out the other day and its name currently escapes me. You could take your voice over whether it's a human voice over or an AI voice over and you could put it in and you can say, I want to add laughter in this spot or, you know, this kind of sadness or or something, and it will change the voice to reflect those emotions, which is an odd thing, but there's definitely an emergence of of AI voices, especially when it's combined with AI face animation.
Yeah. So that can make the voice, you know, the face match the voice. Yep. That's come a long way in a short time. And I can tell you as an agency, you know, we use 11 Labs. We use play HT. We usually use them for social media advertisements or, you know, captioning a short piece of a video or something like that. We're not heavily into, we don't do television advertising or anything like that. So we're not doing that kind of stuff. We did used to pay voice actors periodically, but it was usually through like fiver or upwork or something, you know, it was $50 stuff $70 stuff for 15 minutes or seconds. I should say, you know, it was all quick stuff, right? We're not paying somebody, you know, 10 grand to do the commercial for Giant Corporation, right in that industry and correct me if I'm wrong But I think the worry right now by those companies
[00:04:19] Aaron Ryan:
is owner, ownership of the material and the copyright. Yeah, absolutely. That's been an issue for a long time and Fiverr actually is is still, I mean to this day, the f word in the VO industry and in many industries for the the very reason that we were talking about earlier, the commoditization, the Right. Rate erosion of so many different services. I absolutely know. I've seen these services. In fact, Fiverr commissioned their own video many years ago, basically denigrating voice over artists who are charging fair market rates. It's basically attacking voice over artists and saying, you know, use use people on our services that charge way less. It's way more affordable.
[00:04:56] Narrator AI:
So I think they pretty much did that for every single industry, though. You know, like, Fiverr is a equal opportunity commoditizer.
[00:05:04] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. It it it's such a harsh word, but it's it's exactly what's happening. I I know very well, I mean, the different agencies that use them. So I have run into this myself in the voice over sphere where people I've lost clients who have said, I understand that for a fair market rate for a national TV commercial for 1 year, we should be paying you $32100, $35100, whatever. That's fair market rates. However, I'm being pushed by blah blah blah to do this through AI, and the best we can give you is $300. I mean Yeah. The cheapening of it the cheapening of it has just been so infuriating and saddening to the point of, will we be here in a year? Will we live here in a year? Because I've made a really good income on voice overs.
And authoring is so much more passion driven for me. Writing novels and books is is so much more of a passion, but the income is I'm not even on the screen here. You know, here's voice overs and here's authoring. I would love to see that scale tip someday, but it really depends on how the books do and and, you know, if they go viral and picked up. My first volume of my quadrilogy, there's that word again, has actually been has been picked up by a screenwriter who is adapting it to screen as we speak, and that's something I'm just excited about.
[00:06:20] Narrator AI:
Well, so I think that a couple things there, one of them is that, I mean, you don't have to pay for a voice recording for your book. Yeah. Definitely do that yourself. I mean, for my first book that I did in audio, we paid a voice over actor to do the whole thing. And I I think we paid $1,000 something like that for a couple hundred. No. I guess it was a 120 page book. We we didn't really do any retakes or anything. They recorded all themselves. They did a great job and shout out to his name's Daniel Craig. So shout out to Dan Craig. He used to be the announcer for our podcast too. Yeah. I think that's why it goes by Daniel Craig instead of Dan Craig. The cheapening of industries always happens as those become commoditized and they always get commoditized as soon as the barriers to entry get lower.
Yeah. So as a person who runs a marketing agency, we've been getting our margins have been eaten away for decades. Right? Yeah. Every single day, every client we have gets 10 to a 100 emails from other marketing companies saying that they could do whatever it is that they're getting from us for cheaper every day.
[00:07:32] Aaron Ryan:
I believe it. We have to,
[00:07:34] Narrator AI:
you know, have a, have a value proposition that is defensible for voiceover work that might be, you have an extremely identifiable voice. Mhmm. Maybe there is some kind of uncommon enunciation or something that you can do or inflection that you can do that would be hard to duplicate Mhmm. Because it's not in the training material for the AI. Over time though, it's gonna get really, really difficult to be able to sell that proposition. Right? The other thing is you can kind of look at a time frame. Somebody's always like, okay, mister smart guy, right? Wednesday, are you gonna take your job? And I'm like, it is already taking my job. So what I'm doing is I'm changing what we do so that we are using AI to the fullest advantage that we can, that other people in ways that other people are not using it. Is there a way for you to do that? It's hard to say. When it comes to voice over work, I would say, where's the the inflection point between your voice over skills and experience and equipment and know how collide with artificial intelligence or the things that you could do with artificial intelligence that make it so that you can step it up a notch that other people are not doing.
[00:08:55] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. And that's something each person has to figure out for themselves. Obviously, one of the key moves that some people suggest, and I and I I see the logic of it, but it's also, I guess, maddening would be the, you know, the right word to apply to it, is embrace it. You know, you embrace this competing technology that's that's harming your margins. So Oscar Wilde and this is great counsel that I've received and great counsel that I've given in my in my career as a voice over artist and a voice over artist coach, a business coach. Oscar Wilde said, be yourself. Everyone else has already taken. So one of the worst things you can do is try to be the next Don LaFontaine, the next Will Arnett, the next Mel Blanc. Whoever, don't imitate.
Be yourself, and be unique. As you said earlier, if you have a signature sound, you know, like a Sam Elliott, if you have a something that is unique and identifiable and people go, I know who that is, then you're more you know, you're much more brand friendly, number 1. You're much more unique, number 2. And those things will increase your longevity. But there's so many people you also said the bar to entry has been lowered. Boy, the bar to entry in voice overs was lowered the minute the Internet was invented. Because everyone's got a home studio. Everyone thinks they're a competitor on the same wavelength of, you know, the dot and the font thing.
And it just basically brings down the whole quality quotient of the industry. We're seeing it in authoring as well. There are tools like Chat GPT where you can whip out a novel in 5 minutes, you know, have have, OpenAI or something else create a cover, post that online too, and you've got a complete package that's now salable, but at what cost to creativity? We're talking about No. Intelligence,
[00:10:37] Narrator AI:
and the AI factor in our world today Right. Is stealing from all of us the god given right to create. That's all. I wanna argue the point about novels for a second. And and it's not that I disagree with you. It's that I've had this discussion at link with a few people who say, well, you can just use chat gbt, throw together a novel. I go into mid journey. I whip up a cover. I slap some text on it, and I upload it to Amazon. Right? Yeah. Well, half of the books on Amazon sell less than 3 copies historically. That's even before Chat GPT. So we're talking the whole thing has infinite shelf space that's already 50% filled with stuff nobody's reading. Right? Sure. You are not gonna break through with some crap that you've typed in the chat gpt and came up with and pasted it into a document. Right? I mean, you're just not going to. However,
[00:11:34] Aaron Ryan:
when they're using those same tools to take what you have done and plagiarize it and twist it just a little bit and then repackage it as their own, which is what we're seeing repackage it. Already. Right? But but but as an author, it's something that I have to be wary of, and it's something I have to protect you though. Protect Well, yeah. But those the the rewriting tools were around before chat gpt.
[00:11:56] Narrator AI:
Right? I mean, they existed and and they were almost the same price. Right? I mean, they're rewriting tools have been I mean, I remember seeing those tools in 2,006, you know, and it would just take whatever was on the page, and it would reword it, and it would, you know, move the sentences around and and change some prepos prepositions and some some of the, you know, whatever. Right? It would just just do a quick rewrite. And, you know, so I think that has always been there. It's just easier access now just because more people are aware of it, but it's the same problem. You're seeing a much quicker rollout and an exponential curve in quickness
[00:12:33] Aaron Ryan:
to rollout with people using this software that ends up flooding the market with copies of my book in various iterations that harms me. And one of the only things you can do is, for legal grounds, is maybe register it with the Library of Congress for a for a copyright number, not just the ISBN that you're being issued for a book, but do you perhaps some additional legal coverage? It's just a Well, it's
[00:12:55] Narrator AI:
it's undetectable. Right? Because the AI detection tools are not good enough to not have a high false positive rate. Even though you can say, well, I could tell if this was written by AI or not. If you put it up against actual human written content that is on the same subject matter, it is impossible to tell for most people. Yeah. Now that is not to say that the plot, the ideas, the you know, the the things that make really good writing good are not those things, right? They're not just rewriting the same stuff to have a similar meeting. The nuance is what makes it good and the nuance is lost in the rewriting.
But the other thing is the marketing of the book matters. Absolutely. And Yeah. I mean, you could go out and have AI write some ads for you too, and you can go melt your credit card on Google or Amazon all day long. You're not gonna make more copies sold of your book than it costs you to advertise it. I guarantee it. Of course. The reason is that you don't have a book that's good enough to have someone tell to other people to get that book.
[00:14:14] Aaron Ryan:
Well, even if you do, even when you do have a book that's good, and my books are I'm gonna shamelessly pat myself on the back. I wrote a very, very compelling story that is loaded with heart, especially the initial the prequel, which I went back and wrote. This is volume 0 revelation, is the prequel to the trilogy. This is loaded with heart, and I can market it all day long. I can put the word out there. But granted, if you're pursuing promotions through BookBub or written word media or the fussy librarian or Amazon ads, Facebook ads, TikTok ads, whatever, expense, return.
However, for me, I'm not even looking at it on that level right now. I'm looking at it as a it's it's the long the short term sees it as an expense. The long term sees it as an investment, and that's entirely what it is for me. It's an investment. Well, that's the other thing. Right? Is if if you have a passion project,
[00:15:06] Narrator AI:
there's no passion in what comes out of a generated system. You're not gonna get I mean, it it really depends on kind of defining art. This is what we come back to all the time. Can I make something as good as a corporate graphic designer? Probably not. Can I get close? Sure. Can I make something as good as someone who spent their whole life learning how to make their art and then they come out with a piece? No. What are my favorite thing? Actually, I use AI in writing my book, but I use it for one very specific purpose. And when I am trying to have the AI in my story talk to the characters, I want it to sound the way an AI talks. So I say this is what the computer is trying to say to someone. How would you say this? Right. And it'll be like, and I'm like, you know what? That is a good some of that is a good, you know, like I'll take a piece of it or some of the weird words that it comes out with out of nowhere, you know, and I'll be like, okay. Wow.
Yeah. Let's let's put that weird word in that that most people wouldn't use. That is the correct word for that thing. Syntax. But nobody says that. Yeah. Right. We don't The other thing syntax. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I mean, syntax is something that most people don't talk about unless they're a programmer. Right? Exactly. There's a lot of talk right now about the video generation systems. Right? Like, runway just had gen 3 come out. There's Sora that we don't have public access to, but somehow, fucking some agency and Toys R Us got access to make a video about the founder of Toys R Us with Sora. I'm like, can we just have access to it to play around with it? You know? Like anyway, I've used them. They're not great. You know, they are a lot better than me trying to, like, animate something, but they're not gonna be the same as, like, some basically anyone with a video camera at this point.
Right. Or a cell Yeah. Or a cell phone. Right? And but they're gonna get there. Right? They're gonna get better over time. They're gonna start to have knowledge of, like the physical world and and that's gonna they're, you know, they're already fixing things like people having too many fingers and and whatever people weird motions and stuff. But you have to remember that when you look at stuff like movies, especially like Hollywood movies and stuff, Spider Man, they didn't dress somebody up and have them, like, run up the side of the building. It's CGI. Right? Yeah. It's all computer generated. It's just computer generated with a person guiding it.
[00:17:48] Aaron Ryan:
This is why one of my favorite movies and will remain one of my favorite movies. In fact, I'm I can't believe I even said that. It is my favorite movie of all time and will remain so unless something just, like, diabolically blockbuster comes along and slip you know, knocks it out of place, is aliens. 1986 aliens. There are so few digital shots compared to what there are today, like in a Marvel movie. So much tangibility in the models. They look real. They feel like they're right there, and they gave the actors something visceral, you know, tangible to lock on to. Right. And thus, act act better. I mean, act more convincingly.
So I'm sure. And, like down the whole industry that way with so much digital Yeah. Employment.
[00:18:31] Narrator AI:
Practical effects are so much better. I mean, at least in my opinion. The feel feel. I what I don't like about the CGI of movies is, like, it almost seems like in modern movies, they in the script somebody just wrote like giant warehouse explosion on screen the guys from red letter media on the youtube channel that I watch all the time They hate every movie. But anyway, they they said that like when you watch the CGI of a Transformers movie, every fight looks like an explosion in a junkyard. You have no idea what's happening. There's just metal pieces and crap flying everywhere. Chaos. The sound is chaos. Like the whole thing, you can't make heads or tails of anything that's happening. Right? To me, that's not that's not entertaining.
Right? In aliens, you know what's happening all the time. Yeah. There's no question. Yeah. You're like, the aliens are coming even if you just see the shadow or you hear the noise, you see the expression on the people's faces. And, man, I like, that's not gonna go away anytime soon. But by soon, you know, I mean 5 years.
[00:19:42] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. It's a relative term in many respects.
[00:19:45] Narrator AI:
Like, if you're a voice actor right now and you're planning to retire the next 5 years, you're probably good. Right? Just go for it. Make as much money as you can now while you have the chance.
[00:19:55] Aaron Ryan:
If you're starting your voice career right now, you got a tough road ahead. Yeah. People ask me all the time. As a seasoned voice over artist, I've I've performed for so many Fortune 500 companies beyond count. If you name 1, I've probably voiced it. And people ask me all the time, how do I get into voice overs? I've been told I have a good voice, which means nothing. I've never been told that. I've never once been told, hey. You have a good voice. You should get into voice overs. Has nothing to do with that. But these people will come out of the woodwork, and you're a voice over artist. I wanna do it. I wanna get in. How do I do it? And I I have to caution them and say it's probably not your best interest if you're looking for a viable long term career that's gonna sustain you with any kind of, you know, full time career income. Right. This isn't it. This ain't it. It may maybe it used to be, but not anymore.
[00:20:44] Narrator AI:
Let's do a little quick thought experiment. What are the things that you have as a voice artist that absolutely are different than what someone can get out of a current or upcoming ai system and you had mentioned 1 already which is like emoting Okay, so it's easier if not impossible for an ai to do it correctly at this point But you can have the emotion connected to the meaning of the script, you know for you It's easy for somebody to make an ai do that is difficult, right? So So so there's some difficulty factor there there is a technical factor average, you know marketing rep for a company who's hiring a voice actor is not a technically skilled person most of the time Right. I'm not saying everybody. I know there's lots of people lots of tech, you know, skills out there, but Options.
Let's yeah. There are companies who have clients who absolutely do not want them using AI. Right? That, like, look at, like, REI, a natural foods company. I mean, there's there's an endless amount of people who are essentially anti AI. Right? Or anti technology. For many reasons. For the reason for for for our purposes here, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that that exists. So you need to be trying to find those people, you know, who which companies are in the market for you. Right? And they aren't gonna switch to an AI.
[00:22:21] Aaron Ryan:
Well, there are I don't know if you're familiar with the voice over marketplaces like voices.com, voice 123, v o planet. Some of them have a poor name, poor reputation. But voice 123, for example, is my favorite online marketplace. These are jobs that are posted there are jobs rather, posted multiple jobs every day, 50 to a 100 different jobs for all kinds of age, gender, ethnicity, accent, non accent, genre of voice overs. They're replete with available jobs, and those are humans wanting to cast humans. Right. That's the that's the key point is they're casting human beings.
Now other people, you have their script. You can program that into whatever software you wanna use and generate what kept whatever kind of voice you feel is acceptable. But we can still hear that in many respects. We can still feel, who is this? You know, this doesn't sound like, is this a robot? It sounds convincing, but there's some nuance to the voice. There's some idiosyncrasy to the voice. Something that's just a little bit off with the intonation where you go, I don't think so. And your message is lost. Your your message as the product and as the product advertiser is then lost. If you have a human who's directable, that's another thing that we didn't talk about. We do plenty of directed sessions as voice over artists. If if you if you have a human, they're directable. You can say, I want it more breathy here. I want it more intonation, more accent on this syllable, but this part this syllable of that word, and then end it in a downward inflection. You can program some of that, I know, and the model's been trained and whatnot. But there's nothing like a human to talk to a human. Well, you know, it's funny. There used to be a thing called voice markup language, VML.
[00:24:05] Narrator AI:
It was for, like, systems like Alexa. So you can say, I want you to, you know, enunciate this this way or whatever. There was like a language for it, and it's been lost on the newer voice systems. And the reason that it's not in those new voice systems is that the AI voice systems essentially don't understand it. They don't really know the difference between happy and sad. Right? They're like they just know happy voices sound this way and sad voices sound this way kind of thing. Right. So until that gets better, you know, that's gonna be definitely something that holds the industry back a little bit.
Multiple voice is difficult. Just having 2 people who have to talk to each other is a different conversation than 2 AI voices that you just punch into the computer. Right? Because people speak to each other differently than they speak directly to a camera. Yes, we do. Like the idea of someone being interrupted is extremely difficult to program into something like 11 Labs or Mhmm. You know, like a voice over program. So there's a lot of places where there's still a ton of room for the ais to get better which they will eventually because they got a team engineers working on that thing every day to make it better to fix these problems to which to them are problems But that's where you can take advantage of it if you're in, you know a voice actor and I don't I don't mean to use just your industry This is for any industry, right?
Find out where's the cutoff of the ai is not good at it and it's not gonna get good at it soon and you are good at it. You know? That's that's where you wanna find that happy medium because you don't wanna be, I like, there's this this gal I saw. I can't remember her name off the top of my head. I saw her at the Marketing AI Institute Expo last year in Cleveland, which is a great show, by the way, if you're into marketing and AI. She was talking about knocker uppers, and apparently that was the name of an industry so when you were in london in, you know, the 1800s and alarm clocks had not been invented yet People stayed up all night and they had these long sticks and they would go around and they would tap on your window at the right time to wake you up for work. Knocker uppers. They called them knocker uppers.
[00:26:26] Aaron Ryan:
Interesting.
[00:26:28] Narrator AI:
Anyway, as soon as the alarm clock was invented, the knocker upper job went away. Right? Yep. Replace. It didn't immediately go away. It's not like someone was like, I have invented the alarm clock, and everybody's like, well, I guess I'm out of a job. It takes time for those things to happen. Mhmm. So that's why I mentioned, you know, if you're like 5 years from retirement kind of thing, yeah, then it's not a big deal for you. But if you're 25 and you're starting to get into a career in something, you know, you better not be getting into a career that AI thinks is gonna be, you know, the the direction that technology is headed. Replaceable.
[00:27:01] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. One thing that I really pride myself on and I'm really grateful for over the length of, I don't know, 35, 36, whatever, working years is is the ability to pivot. I've adapted and overcome and and, you know, they say adapt or die. I've been a, you know, a, a whole bunch of different roles just growing up and kind of finding my footing in the world, my place in this world, whatever. And then I I landed on multimedia production, so audio video production and transfer video duplication, blah, blah, blah. And then it turned into I adapted into wedding videographer. Never again. But wedding videography then turned into and corporate videography then turned into voice overs. In the middle of all of this, I was being a a singer and a performer as well. But wedding videography gave way to and corporate videography gave way to voiceovers. Voiceovers is now, giving way to being an author again.
I was an author and a voiceover artist in tandem with the business books that I put out, but there's just something so much more passionate. And I think that level of survivability, regardless of the tidal wave of whatever threat is coming at you, that survivability factor can give you those inroads into an inroads into an exodus. Is that okay to say it that way? Right. An inroads into an exodus to something that will allow you more survivability. And that's what authoring is for me long term. Certainly way more satisfying. So we'll see what happens, but that's Yeah. I
[00:28:27] Narrator AI:
I love the idea of of right and and honestly, I started my first science fiction book when I was about 15 years old, and I was in this writing class in high school. And I never did finish it, but it was one of those things, you know, I'm always gonna come back to it kinda thing. And after I wrote a bunch of business books, kind of the same idea, I got, you know, I had the bug in me for writing and and finally I was like, okay. I got an idea that that I think, you know, I could develop well, and I kinda outlined it a little bit. I've spent too many years learning about, you know, plot structure and story structure and all the things that need to go into a good story. And and I should have started way before. So if you're if you're gonna write that book people, start start typing. That's all. Somebody asked me, they said, how do you get so much writing done? I said, I drink coffee and I type words and then I do it every single day.
And 5 days a week, Monday to Friday, drop my kid off at camper at school. I go get a coffee, and I sit and I write my book. I just do it every single day.
[00:29:31] Aaron Ryan:
Let me let me blow you away here for a minute because, obviously, you'll understand what I say when I say what I say in a minute. Okay. But I'll just say it right now. I've been accused of using AI because of my book publication timeline. So or publishing timeline. So this book is the first one that I started writing in the dissonance trilogy. It's volume 1, reality. I started writing it November 21, 2023. I was finished writing it December 16, 2023. It's 328 pages. Was there a lot of editing that needed to be done? Sure. But I finished at 12 16, published it January 1st. The next one, which I don't have the new hardcover for, I just changed the covers, was published March 20th.
The third one was published May 18th. The prequel was published 6 June 6th. So you see these publishing windows growing smaller and smaller. I had a story that was bursting out of me like an alien queen, and I had to tell this story. And when you are consumed with this drive and this passion to do it, I I don't want to use AI. I will never use AI to tell my story. This is my creative gift. But it but but I've been accused of it because simply, the the publishing timelines that you'll see. Yeah. People don't understand how you can do something that fast. When you're compelled, when you got a fireman, you just do it.
[00:30:54] Narrator AI:
I mean, I wrote my book, will AI take my job from the the day I wrote the first word to the day I published it was 90 days roughly. Yeah. And that's editing with, like, 3 passes of editing. Yeah. And Yep. When I explain the actual process where I'm like, okay. Well, I outlined it first, and then I wrote the first four chapters. Those go to the first editor. I'm working on the next 4 chapters. Those other 4 come back to me. I edit them, and now I'm but the, you know, the next 4 are already at the editor and I'm doing this kind of rotation of editors
[00:31:28] Aaron Ryan:
to get through it. Then it makes sense. Right? Okay. Well, it doesn't take that long for me to do the research and write it and and It doesn't. Get it off to the editor because it's all happening at the same time. People think that it does and they make assumptions basically on that their preconceived notions of how long it takes to publish a book. But it's funny because yes, if you're talking traditional publishing that takes a really long time to get your book published. Right. Self publishing man, I'm a self starter. This is why we're you know, I wanted to do this interview. I'm a self starter. I'm deeply passionate about creative pursuits.
And as a self published man, I get to command a higher royalty. I can publish way quicker. I can maintain creative control, and those things are utterly invaluable to me Right. As an author. So when you have that kind of control and that drive and that passion, things just happen quicker. You want them to be out quicker. This guy that,
[00:32:20] Narrator AI:
that my business partner knew, he said there's something wrong with his laptop. We had to save this thing for his laptop because it had his novel that he's been writing for 11 years on it. And you know what? You are never fucking finishing that novel. If it takes you 11 years to write it 11 years. Yeah. It's just not gonna happen. I don't care what it's about. Right?
[00:32:39] Aaron Ryan:
The the fact is you gotta be, like, better done than perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Get it out there. It will fix itself. I mean, you could George Lucas size things until they're they're, you know, beating a dead horse. I actually just went back, and I've discovered in writing the prequel, which is volume 0 revelation, which actually now predates this one. This is volume 0. This is volume 1. I discovered in the timeline of some things that I had written in 1, which was written first, that there were some inaccuracies because of what I wrote in here. So I went back and I fixed the audiobook. I I re rerecorded that chapter, some segments of that chapter, reuploaded it to ACX, and you just go back and do it. But I wanted to get it out. Of course, there's gonna be errors in it that you'll find out later.
[00:33:24] Narrator AI:
Just get it done. I mean Yeah. But, I mean, even a you know, you read an Asimov book, and it still got errors. Yeah. It the most famous authors in the world had errors in their books. Right? Where inconsistencies in timeline. You know, the other thing is and this is this is kind of a trick. So if you're self published or even if you're not, as long as you have control over your account, you can upload a new copy. Right? Mhmm. So you could fix it and then upload the new copy. And then anyone that buys it from that point forward will get the fixed version. Correct. And anybody who either asks for an update, you have to go into a menu and find it, which nobody ever does, or they they kind of delete it off their device and then redownloaded it, then they'll get the new version.
[00:34:12] Aaron Ryan:
Correct. With something like IngramSpark, they're gonna charge you for that. But this is what I love about KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, is that you can upload 10 years from now a corrected version. There's no charge. Right. And I suppose that's just by virtue of the fact that they're Amazon. I think they've got enough money. But IngramSpark is gonna charge you $25 for each change that you do and and upload. Draft2Digital, no. Kobo, no. But, yeah, if you could go back in and change it later on and and just fix things, if you need to tinker, if you're that kind of George Lucas person, go ahead. But the the ability exists.
[00:34:47] Narrator AI:
Yeah. I think one of the most powerful things that that you can do when you're writing, you know, like a fictional story is you kind of get into this discovery mode where you're like, okay, I've I've kind of fleshed out the story but like, what is the character gonna say when this happens? Because you don't know that always right before you write it. You're like You kind of go through the story in your head and and you get to that point and you're like, okay, this is when You know marcus is gonna say oh shit, you know, like you just don't know what they're gonna say until the time comes.
[00:35:24] Aaron Ryan:
Exactly. And that's more of a of a a pantser approach. So for those who don't know, there's 2 different approaches primarily when you write a book. There's a a plotter or a planner and a pantser flying by the seat of your pants. I'm so much more of a pantser. I'm so much more organic in my storytelling. And the characters, I feel, need to lead you in a way. You can run into different things, and the spontaneity is what life is all about. We run into things that are not planned. How we deal with them reveals our character. How we deal with them then sets the stage for, you know, the subsequent events that are gonna happen in our life. And I I really appreciate that more than just every single bullet point detail laid out. Now granted, if you don't have guideposts or mile markers along their journey, they're wandering bereft of any kind of aim or purpose really for that. So it's really good to if you're gonna be an organic writer, to have at least some points of destination along the way. So they know they're going from a to b, not a to, I don't know, 7. And then 2, and then maybe 9 and pound.
It's just easier that way.
[00:36:33] Narrator AI:
Yeah. I had a interesting thing along the ways. I kind of I planned out what was gonna happen in my book, and then I started writing it. And then I had a couple ideas where I was like, okay. You know what? That's it's a good enough idea to go back and kind of weave this back into the story. Yeah, and And then once I did that there was a lot of like, okay I need to go back and fix this and then I gotta reread this to make sure I took you know, it took this into account and and so the process is so much longer than writing a non fiction book You know, absolutely My nonfiction books, I was like knocking them out in 90 days.
For me, I know, you know, you have been writing your books pretty quickly. Right? And I assume you're spending, you know, several hours a day at least on writing to to keep up that schedule. Right? I just I got, you know, I got 2 businesses I'm running, so I can't, you know, put that much time into it. Otherwise, I would just write all day, which that's my I think that may be part of my retirement plan is, you know, I I don't think I'm gonna get rich writing books, but I'm gonna get rich working on other stuff and then use my time to write books after.
[00:37:40] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. Well, I don't think you're gonna get rich unless you're Tolkien, and he's dead. So anyway. That's right.
[00:37:45] Narrator AI:
I or Suzanne Collins or, you know, Rowling or something like that. Or that guy that writes those kids books about farts. Oh my god. I heard him on a podcast too, and he's got, like, 60 books or something out, and he makes I don't know. Like, he he was selling, like, 12,000 copies a month or something, and I'm like, oh, good lord.
[00:38:03] Aaron Ryan:
That's 1,000,000 of dollars. As a musician, that's one of the things that I I have an 8 and a 5 year old. I have 8 5 year old sons. Yeah. So as a musician, I wrote some really I've been a, you know, musician since, well, I don't know, early early nineties, late eighties, whatever. And and I love making music. I love the art of creating, but I mean music is a big passion of mine. So I just I just produced, kind of a, a curtain call, siren song CD because I don't think I'm gonna do anymore. But it was so good, and the music is so heartfelt, and it was powerfully produced. I produced it myself for the very first time. And I was so happy with this, and and and, you know, I want my kids to hear it and enjoy it. But what do they want? They'll ask Alexa for Skibbity Toilet. Right. You know? Or they want these fart songs and poop songs, and it's like, really? Those It's always toilet humor.
I'm in the wrong genre.
[00:38:54] Narrator AI:
My daughter's 8 also. She's a big fan of Little Big, but she gotta kinda watch which ones. I I think, you know, if your kids watch any YouTube at all, they've they've come across Little Big. Well, okay. So Little Big wrote the song Skibbity, which is what created the slang term skibbidi that was used for skibbidi toilet. Okay. There we go. Skibbidi was like, I don't know, like a made up word for something probably inappropriate for children, but it was a funny video and stuff and has, like, I don't know, like, a 100,000,000 views or something ridiculous.
[00:39:27] Aaron Ryan:
Where's the
[00:39:29] Narrator AI:
best place for people to get the, dissonance quadrilogy of books?
[00:39:34] Aaron Ryan:
Yes. Or if you are quadrilogically challenged, you can just use the word tetralogy. Tetralogy is actually more appropriate for a a series of 4 books than it'd be pentology for 5. You know, we're that's 1 to grow on for today. That was free. But, basically, you could go to dissonancetheseries.com, but an easier way to rec to remember is just go to get these books.com. I got that domain and forwards there. So dissonancetheseries. Dissonance series in and of itself, or you can simply visit author erinryan.com, which has links to dissonance and all the books and everything else like that. And all social media links are there as well.
[00:40:18] Narrator AI:
Perfect. Alright. Aaron, I got one more question for you that that I thought I would sneak in at the end. Is it about cheeseburgers? It is not. I know that would have been a good one, and and that's kind of an inside joke, you know, on on structured podcasts, you know, that have questions like that. My question was, as a musician, where do you land on the Suno, UDL AI music generating software?
[00:40:45] Aaron Ryan:
So I have I've actually had shirts made that say if it ain't human, it ain't for me. And in the ain't, each of those is capital AI in each of those. I'm a staunch believer that creativity is the most natural fundamental gift we have. We I'm a Christian. God created. We create. It's how we reflect that. And the ability to take something and and or nothing and make it something, how cool is that? Books, poetry, music, song, doesn't matter. Whatever you make, you know, you were able to do that with you. When you use assistance or as I call it, cheats, I'm gonna, you know, rub people the wrong way that way. If you use cheats that way to help accomplish your goal, then it really wasn't you who created that a 100%. You've actually used tools to help you create. Now the argument could be made.
Well, you have to have a chisel in order to to sculpt this, or you have to use a hammer to create that. Those are tools and so is AI. In the medical field, great. If you can use AI to help save someone's life, perfect. If it you can use it for computer technology to help assist us in under in education, great. However, the the ability to create is something I never wanna compromise, and music is right there in that as well. I just don't And I don't advocate for it. I have I have these levels
[00:42:09] Narrator AI:
of music in my brain where I'm like, there's a lot of people making, quote, music. What they've done is used a digitizer because they don't know how to sing in key. And, you know, they've they've put used samples because they don't know how to play any instruments and they've put all that together and they're like, look, I made a song. Yeah. I'm like, did you did you really more? But then also those same people are turning around and they're looking at people who just you know typed in a bunch of stuff and and did some testing with Suno or udio and they're like, that's not really creating music, you know, so there's definitely these kind of levels in in music creation. I think as a, you know, as personally as a musician, I have no problem with AI music generations.
I guarantee it. Absolutely mark my words. Some at least chart topping, if not number 1 song, is gonna be out that came that was generated by an AI system soon. And I think Yeah. I think someone is going to make it, put it out, say it's from their band, and then after the fact, come out and say they generated it. That's already happened in the photography world. The I forget his name, but the photographer who actually competed in that contest
[00:43:27] Aaron Ryan:
submitted a photo, revealed he won, revealed later that it was AI. And, you know, the community's in uproar. People are so surprised.
[00:43:35] Narrator AI:
It'll happen for sure. Did you see the opposite last week? Somebody entered a actual photo in an AI photo contest and won. Oh, wow. So they did the reverse. Interesting. That's right. Trickery. Very interesting. Alright, Aaron. It's been a pleasure. I love chatting with you, and, I can't wait to read your book. There's so much going on. It's it's a tough, tough world out there with the AI trying to figure out, you know, where it's going, what's happening, and and where it's good and where it's not.
[00:44:07] Aaron Ryan:
So keep creating. Save humanity.
[00:44:09] Narrator AI:
That's right. Alright, everybody. Have a great day.
[00:44:12] Aaron Ryan:
Thank you.
[00:44:16] Narrator AI:
Remember to tap like, subscribe, and follow to never miss a show. This voice over used to be done by a human, but now it is synthetic. Oh la la. If you want to know if your job or business is safe from disruption read Matt's new book Will AI Take My Job? Predictions about AI in corporations, small business and the workplace. Available now on Amazon. Trust me, it'll be worth it. Voice is smooth and bright.
[00:44:47] Narrator AI:
Take dreams to aid and fly. Futures to explore. Open every door.
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Masters podcast with your host, Matt Rouse. Digital Marketing Masters, episode 258 with Aaron Ryan. Aaron, how are you today?
[00:00:17] Aaron Ryan:
Doing well. Thanks. How are you doing? I am doing fantastic.
[00:00:21] Narrator AI:
You are a celebrated voice actor, but also the author of The Dissonance Quadrilogy. Yes. Which I managed to say for the first time since we were talking. Probably. Book series looks super interesting. I'm also writing a fiction book, so that's kinda how we connected. Then you were talking about, you know, AI and your voice acting career. So, I mean, I think we have lots to talk about. You know, the first thing I think would be when when it comes to the voice acting side, and you talk about how AI is kind of affecting that industry. Do you wanna talk about that and we can we can just kind of have a little conversation about AI and voice overs? Yeah.
[00:01:07] Aaron Ryan:
Well, I've been doing voice overs since 93, and obviously, the industry has changed and evolved and grown and and contracted and shrunk as with any industry. With with the implementation of AI that's just become so prolific and widespread, especially growing by leaps and bounds in 2023, it's really impacted the the voiceover industry. There are very, very well renowned and beloved colleagues of mine who are making their own exodus from the VO industry after many years as a, you know, celebrated, as you put it, voice artist. And so it's nipping at the corners, or I should say it was nipping at the corners. Now it's actually starting to, you know, get more of an appetite and devour certain genres of voice overs. It's what's pushed me back into wanting to be a full time author. I've been authoring for years years, but this is my exit strategy from from voice overs. People are buying, you know, 29, 49, $79 software packages like SpeechHello and SpeechOcean that will, you know, synthesize a voice and create entire commercial spots, radio, TV, broadcast spots, whatever.
And clients are are are buying that instead of interacting with human beings that emote, that enunciate, that, have the idiosyncrasies and nuances that we all have that software can't replicate. So it's really sad.
[00:02:27] Narrator AI:
I think when it comes to AI and the voice over industry, I think people were surprised at how quickly it went from, like, oh, this thing sorta sounds like a person now to, like, wow, this actually sounds like a person, and it's kind of hard to distinguish until you get the the idea of emoting. Yeah. But even that, I mean, there's just another system came out the other day and its name currently escapes me. You could take your voice over whether it's a human voice over or an AI voice over and you could put it in and you can say, I want to add laughter in this spot or, you know, this kind of sadness or or something, and it will change the voice to reflect those emotions, which is an odd thing, but there's definitely an emergence of of AI voices, especially when it's combined with AI face animation.
Yeah. So that can make the voice, you know, the face match the voice. Yep. That's come a long way in a short time. And I can tell you as an agency, you know, we use 11 Labs. We use play HT. We usually use them for social media advertisements or, you know, captioning a short piece of a video or something like that. We're not heavily into, we don't do television advertising or anything like that. So we're not doing that kind of stuff. We did used to pay voice actors periodically, but it was usually through like fiver or upwork or something, you know, it was $50 stuff $70 stuff for 15 minutes or seconds. I should say, you know, it was all quick stuff, right? We're not paying somebody, you know, 10 grand to do the commercial for Giant Corporation, right in that industry and correct me if I'm wrong But I think the worry right now by those companies
[00:04:19] Aaron Ryan:
is owner, ownership of the material and the copyright. Yeah, absolutely. That's been an issue for a long time and Fiverr actually is is still, I mean to this day, the f word in the VO industry and in many industries for the the very reason that we were talking about earlier, the commoditization, the Right. Rate erosion of so many different services. I absolutely know. I've seen these services. In fact, Fiverr commissioned their own video many years ago, basically denigrating voice over artists who are charging fair market rates. It's basically attacking voice over artists and saying, you know, use use people on our services that charge way less. It's way more affordable.
[00:04:56] Narrator AI:
So I think they pretty much did that for every single industry, though. You know, like, Fiverr is a equal opportunity commoditizer.
[00:05:04] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. It it it's such a harsh word, but it's it's exactly what's happening. I I know very well, I mean, the different agencies that use them. So I have run into this myself in the voice over sphere where people I've lost clients who have said, I understand that for a fair market rate for a national TV commercial for 1 year, we should be paying you $32100, $35100, whatever. That's fair market rates. However, I'm being pushed by blah blah blah to do this through AI, and the best we can give you is $300. I mean Yeah. The cheapening of it the cheapening of it has just been so infuriating and saddening to the point of, will we be here in a year? Will we live here in a year? Because I've made a really good income on voice overs.
And authoring is so much more passion driven for me. Writing novels and books is is so much more of a passion, but the income is I'm not even on the screen here. You know, here's voice overs and here's authoring. I would love to see that scale tip someday, but it really depends on how the books do and and, you know, if they go viral and picked up. My first volume of my quadrilogy, there's that word again, has actually been has been picked up by a screenwriter who is adapting it to screen as we speak, and that's something I'm just excited about.
[00:06:20] Narrator AI:
Well, so I think that a couple things there, one of them is that, I mean, you don't have to pay for a voice recording for your book. Yeah. Definitely do that yourself. I mean, for my first book that I did in audio, we paid a voice over actor to do the whole thing. And I I think we paid $1,000 something like that for a couple hundred. No. I guess it was a 120 page book. We we didn't really do any retakes or anything. They recorded all themselves. They did a great job and shout out to his name's Daniel Craig. So shout out to Dan Craig. He used to be the announcer for our podcast too. Yeah. I think that's why it goes by Daniel Craig instead of Dan Craig. The cheapening of industries always happens as those become commoditized and they always get commoditized as soon as the barriers to entry get lower.
Yeah. So as a person who runs a marketing agency, we've been getting our margins have been eaten away for decades. Right? Yeah. Every single day, every client we have gets 10 to a 100 emails from other marketing companies saying that they could do whatever it is that they're getting from us for cheaper every day.
[00:07:32] Aaron Ryan:
I believe it. We have to,
[00:07:34] Narrator AI:
you know, have a, have a value proposition that is defensible for voiceover work that might be, you have an extremely identifiable voice. Mhmm. Maybe there is some kind of uncommon enunciation or something that you can do or inflection that you can do that would be hard to duplicate Mhmm. Because it's not in the training material for the AI. Over time though, it's gonna get really, really difficult to be able to sell that proposition. Right? The other thing is you can kind of look at a time frame. Somebody's always like, okay, mister smart guy, right? Wednesday, are you gonna take your job? And I'm like, it is already taking my job. So what I'm doing is I'm changing what we do so that we are using AI to the fullest advantage that we can, that other people in ways that other people are not using it. Is there a way for you to do that? It's hard to say. When it comes to voice over work, I would say, where's the the inflection point between your voice over skills and experience and equipment and know how collide with artificial intelligence or the things that you could do with artificial intelligence that make it so that you can step it up a notch that other people are not doing.
[00:08:55] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. And that's something each person has to figure out for themselves. Obviously, one of the key moves that some people suggest, and I and I I see the logic of it, but it's also, I guess, maddening would be the, you know, the right word to apply to it, is embrace it. You know, you embrace this competing technology that's that's harming your margins. So Oscar Wilde and this is great counsel that I've received and great counsel that I've given in my in my career as a voice over artist and a voice over artist coach, a business coach. Oscar Wilde said, be yourself. Everyone else has already taken. So one of the worst things you can do is try to be the next Don LaFontaine, the next Will Arnett, the next Mel Blanc. Whoever, don't imitate.
Be yourself, and be unique. As you said earlier, if you have a signature sound, you know, like a Sam Elliott, if you have a something that is unique and identifiable and people go, I know who that is, then you're more you know, you're much more brand friendly, number 1. You're much more unique, number 2. And those things will increase your longevity. But there's so many people you also said the bar to entry has been lowered. Boy, the bar to entry in voice overs was lowered the minute the Internet was invented. Because everyone's got a home studio. Everyone thinks they're a competitor on the same wavelength of, you know, the dot and the font thing.
And it just basically brings down the whole quality quotient of the industry. We're seeing it in authoring as well. There are tools like Chat GPT where you can whip out a novel in 5 minutes, you know, have have, OpenAI or something else create a cover, post that online too, and you've got a complete package that's now salable, but at what cost to creativity? We're talking about No. Intelligence,
[00:10:37] Narrator AI:
and the AI factor in our world today Right. Is stealing from all of us the god given right to create. That's all. I wanna argue the point about novels for a second. And and it's not that I disagree with you. It's that I've had this discussion at link with a few people who say, well, you can just use chat gbt, throw together a novel. I go into mid journey. I whip up a cover. I slap some text on it, and I upload it to Amazon. Right? Yeah. Well, half of the books on Amazon sell less than 3 copies historically. That's even before Chat GPT. So we're talking the whole thing has infinite shelf space that's already 50% filled with stuff nobody's reading. Right? Sure. You are not gonna break through with some crap that you've typed in the chat gpt and came up with and pasted it into a document. Right? I mean, you're just not going to. However,
[00:11:34] Aaron Ryan:
when they're using those same tools to take what you have done and plagiarize it and twist it just a little bit and then repackage it as their own, which is what we're seeing repackage it. Already. Right? But but but as an author, it's something that I have to be wary of, and it's something I have to protect you though. Protect Well, yeah. But those the the rewriting tools were around before chat gpt.
[00:11:56] Narrator AI:
Right? I mean, they existed and and they were almost the same price. Right? I mean, they're rewriting tools have been I mean, I remember seeing those tools in 2,006, you know, and it would just take whatever was on the page, and it would reword it, and it would, you know, move the sentences around and and change some prepos prepositions and some some of the, you know, whatever. Right? It would just just do a quick rewrite. And, you know, so I think that has always been there. It's just easier access now just because more people are aware of it, but it's the same problem. You're seeing a much quicker rollout and an exponential curve in quickness
[00:12:33] Aaron Ryan:
to rollout with people using this software that ends up flooding the market with copies of my book in various iterations that harms me. And one of the only things you can do is, for legal grounds, is maybe register it with the Library of Congress for a for a copyright number, not just the ISBN that you're being issued for a book, but do you perhaps some additional legal coverage? It's just a Well, it's
[00:12:55] Narrator AI:
it's undetectable. Right? Because the AI detection tools are not good enough to not have a high false positive rate. Even though you can say, well, I could tell if this was written by AI or not. If you put it up against actual human written content that is on the same subject matter, it is impossible to tell for most people. Yeah. Now that is not to say that the plot, the ideas, the you know, the the things that make really good writing good are not those things, right? They're not just rewriting the same stuff to have a similar meeting. The nuance is what makes it good and the nuance is lost in the rewriting.
But the other thing is the marketing of the book matters. Absolutely. And Yeah. I mean, you could go out and have AI write some ads for you too, and you can go melt your credit card on Google or Amazon all day long. You're not gonna make more copies sold of your book than it costs you to advertise it. I guarantee it. Of course. The reason is that you don't have a book that's good enough to have someone tell to other people to get that book.
[00:14:14] Aaron Ryan:
Well, even if you do, even when you do have a book that's good, and my books are I'm gonna shamelessly pat myself on the back. I wrote a very, very compelling story that is loaded with heart, especially the initial the prequel, which I went back and wrote. This is volume 0 revelation, is the prequel to the trilogy. This is loaded with heart, and I can market it all day long. I can put the word out there. But granted, if you're pursuing promotions through BookBub or written word media or the fussy librarian or Amazon ads, Facebook ads, TikTok ads, whatever, expense, return.
However, for me, I'm not even looking at it on that level right now. I'm looking at it as a it's it's the long the short term sees it as an expense. The long term sees it as an investment, and that's entirely what it is for me. It's an investment. Well, that's the other thing. Right? Is if if you have a passion project,
[00:15:06] Narrator AI:
there's no passion in what comes out of a generated system. You're not gonna get I mean, it it really depends on kind of defining art. This is what we come back to all the time. Can I make something as good as a corporate graphic designer? Probably not. Can I get close? Sure. Can I make something as good as someone who spent their whole life learning how to make their art and then they come out with a piece? No. What are my favorite thing? Actually, I use AI in writing my book, but I use it for one very specific purpose. And when I am trying to have the AI in my story talk to the characters, I want it to sound the way an AI talks. So I say this is what the computer is trying to say to someone. How would you say this? Right. And it'll be like, and I'm like, you know what? That is a good some of that is a good, you know, like I'll take a piece of it or some of the weird words that it comes out with out of nowhere, you know, and I'll be like, okay. Wow.
Yeah. Let's let's put that weird word in that that most people wouldn't use. That is the correct word for that thing. Syntax. But nobody says that. Yeah. Right. We don't The other thing syntax. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I mean, syntax is something that most people don't talk about unless they're a programmer. Right? Exactly. There's a lot of talk right now about the video generation systems. Right? Like, runway just had gen 3 come out. There's Sora that we don't have public access to, but somehow, fucking some agency and Toys R Us got access to make a video about the founder of Toys R Us with Sora. I'm like, can we just have access to it to play around with it? You know? Like anyway, I've used them. They're not great. You know, they are a lot better than me trying to, like, animate something, but they're not gonna be the same as, like, some basically anyone with a video camera at this point.
Right. Or a cell Yeah. Or a cell phone. Right? And but they're gonna get there. Right? They're gonna get better over time. They're gonna start to have knowledge of, like the physical world and and that's gonna they're, you know, they're already fixing things like people having too many fingers and and whatever people weird motions and stuff. But you have to remember that when you look at stuff like movies, especially like Hollywood movies and stuff, Spider Man, they didn't dress somebody up and have them, like, run up the side of the building. It's CGI. Right? Yeah. It's all computer generated. It's just computer generated with a person guiding it.
[00:17:48] Aaron Ryan:
This is why one of my favorite movies and will remain one of my favorite movies. In fact, I'm I can't believe I even said that. It is my favorite movie of all time and will remain so unless something just, like, diabolically blockbuster comes along and slip you know, knocks it out of place, is aliens. 1986 aliens. There are so few digital shots compared to what there are today, like in a Marvel movie. So much tangibility in the models. They look real. They feel like they're right there, and they gave the actors something visceral, you know, tangible to lock on to. Right. And thus, act act better. I mean, act more convincingly.
So I'm sure. And, like down the whole industry that way with so much digital Yeah. Employment.
[00:18:31] Narrator AI:
Practical effects are so much better. I mean, at least in my opinion. The feel feel. I what I don't like about the CGI of movies is, like, it almost seems like in modern movies, they in the script somebody just wrote like giant warehouse explosion on screen the guys from red letter media on the youtube channel that I watch all the time They hate every movie. But anyway, they they said that like when you watch the CGI of a Transformers movie, every fight looks like an explosion in a junkyard. You have no idea what's happening. There's just metal pieces and crap flying everywhere. Chaos. The sound is chaos. Like the whole thing, you can't make heads or tails of anything that's happening. Right? To me, that's not that's not entertaining.
Right? In aliens, you know what's happening all the time. Yeah. There's no question. Yeah. You're like, the aliens are coming even if you just see the shadow or you hear the noise, you see the expression on the people's faces. And, man, I like, that's not gonna go away anytime soon. But by soon, you know, I mean 5 years.
[00:19:42] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. It's a relative term in many respects.
[00:19:45] Narrator AI:
Like, if you're a voice actor right now and you're planning to retire the next 5 years, you're probably good. Right? Just go for it. Make as much money as you can now while you have the chance.
[00:19:55] Aaron Ryan:
If you're starting your voice career right now, you got a tough road ahead. Yeah. People ask me all the time. As a seasoned voice over artist, I've I've performed for so many Fortune 500 companies beyond count. If you name 1, I've probably voiced it. And people ask me all the time, how do I get into voice overs? I've been told I have a good voice, which means nothing. I've never been told that. I've never once been told, hey. You have a good voice. You should get into voice overs. Has nothing to do with that. But these people will come out of the woodwork, and you're a voice over artist. I wanna do it. I wanna get in. How do I do it? And I I have to caution them and say it's probably not your best interest if you're looking for a viable long term career that's gonna sustain you with any kind of, you know, full time career income. Right. This isn't it. This ain't it. It may maybe it used to be, but not anymore.
[00:20:44] Narrator AI:
Let's do a little quick thought experiment. What are the things that you have as a voice artist that absolutely are different than what someone can get out of a current or upcoming ai system and you had mentioned 1 already which is like emoting Okay, so it's easier if not impossible for an ai to do it correctly at this point But you can have the emotion connected to the meaning of the script, you know for you It's easy for somebody to make an ai do that is difficult, right? So So so there's some difficulty factor there there is a technical factor average, you know marketing rep for a company who's hiring a voice actor is not a technically skilled person most of the time Right. I'm not saying everybody. I know there's lots of people lots of tech, you know, skills out there, but Options.
Let's yeah. There are companies who have clients who absolutely do not want them using AI. Right? That, like, look at, like, REI, a natural foods company. I mean, there's there's an endless amount of people who are essentially anti AI. Right? Or anti technology. For many reasons. For the reason for for for our purposes here, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that that exists. So you need to be trying to find those people, you know, who which companies are in the market for you. Right? And they aren't gonna switch to an AI.
[00:22:21] Aaron Ryan:
Well, there are I don't know if you're familiar with the voice over marketplaces like voices.com, voice 123, v o planet. Some of them have a poor name, poor reputation. But voice 123, for example, is my favorite online marketplace. These are jobs that are posted there are jobs rather, posted multiple jobs every day, 50 to a 100 different jobs for all kinds of age, gender, ethnicity, accent, non accent, genre of voice overs. They're replete with available jobs, and those are humans wanting to cast humans. Right. That's the that's the key point is they're casting human beings.
Now other people, you have their script. You can program that into whatever software you wanna use and generate what kept whatever kind of voice you feel is acceptable. But we can still hear that in many respects. We can still feel, who is this? You know, this doesn't sound like, is this a robot? It sounds convincing, but there's some nuance to the voice. There's some idiosyncrasy to the voice. Something that's just a little bit off with the intonation where you go, I don't think so. And your message is lost. Your your message as the product and as the product advertiser is then lost. If you have a human who's directable, that's another thing that we didn't talk about. We do plenty of directed sessions as voice over artists. If if you if you have a human, they're directable. You can say, I want it more breathy here. I want it more intonation, more accent on this syllable, but this part this syllable of that word, and then end it in a downward inflection. You can program some of that, I know, and the model's been trained and whatnot. But there's nothing like a human to talk to a human. Well, you know, it's funny. There used to be a thing called voice markup language, VML.
[00:24:05] Narrator AI:
It was for, like, systems like Alexa. So you can say, I want you to, you know, enunciate this this way or whatever. There was like a language for it, and it's been lost on the newer voice systems. And the reason that it's not in those new voice systems is that the AI voice systems essentially don't understand it. They don't really know the difference between happy and sad. Right? They're like they just know happy voices sound this way and sad voices sound this way kind of thing. Right. So until that gets better, you know, that's gonna be definitely something that holds the industry back a little bit.
Multiple voice is difficult. Just having 2 people who have to talk to each other is a different conversation than 2 AI voices that you just punch into the computer. Right? Because people speak to each other differently than they speak directly to a camera. Yes, we do. Like the idea of someone being interrupted is extremely difficult to program into something like 11 Labs or Mhmm. You know, like a voice over program. So there's a lot of places where there's still a ton of room for the ais to get better which they will eventually because they got a team engineers working on that thing every day to make it better to fix these problems to which to them are problems But that's where you can take advantage of it if you're in, you know a voice actor and I don't I don't mean to use just your industry This is for any industry, right?
Find out where's the cutoff of the ai is not good at it and it's not gonna get good at it soon and you are good at it. You know? That's that's where you wanna find that happy medium because you don't wanna be, I like, there's this this gal I saw. I can't remember her name off the top of my head. I saw her at the Marketing AI Institute Expo last year in Cleveland, which is a great show, by the way, if you're into marketing and AI. She was talking about knocker uppers, and apparently that was the name of an industry so when you were in london in, you know, the 1800s and alarm clocks had not been invented yet People stayed up all night and they had these long sticks and they would go around and they would tap on your window at the right time to wake you up for work. Knocker uppers. They called them knocker uppers.
[00:26:26] Aaron Ryan:
Interesting.
[00:26:28] Narrator AI:
Anyway, as soon as the alarm clock was invented, the knocker upper job went away. Right? Yep. Replace. It didn't immediately go away. It's not like someone was like, I have invented the alarm clock, and everybody's like, well, I guess I'm out of a job. It takes time for those things to happen. Mhmm. So that's why I mentioned, you know, if you're like 5 years from retirement kind of thing, yeah, then it's not a big deal for you. But if you're 25 and you're starting to get into a career in something, you know, you better not be getting into a career that AI thinks is gonna be, you know, the the direction that technology is headed. Replaceable.
[00:27:01] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. One thing that I really pride myself on and I'm really grateful for over the length of, I don't know, 35, 36, whatever, working years is is the ability to pivot. I've adapted and overcome and and, you know, they say adapt or die. I've been a, you know, a, a whole bunch of different roles just growing up and kind of finding my footing in the world, my place in this world, whatever. And then I I landed on multimedia production, so audio video production and transfer video duplication, blah, blah, blah. And then it turned into I adapted into wedding videographer. Never again. But wedding videography then turned into and corporate videography then turned into voice overs. In the middle of all of this, I was being a a singer and a performer as well. But wedding videography gave way to and corporate videography gave way to voiceovers. Voiceovers is now, giving way to being an author again.
I was an author and a voiceover artist in tandem with the business books that I put out, but there's just something so much more passionate. And I think that level of survivability, regardless of the tidal wave of whatever threat is coming at you, that survivability factor can give you those inroads into an inroads into an exodus. Is that okay to say it that way? Right. An inroads into an exodus to something that will allow you more survivability. And that's what authoring is for me long term. Certainly way more satisfying. So we'll see what happens, but that's Yeah. I
[00:28:27] Narrator AI:
I love the idea of of right and and honestly, I started my first science fiction book when I was about 15 years old, and I was in this writing class in high school. And I never did finish it, but it was one of those things, you know, I'm always gonna come back to it kinda thing. And after I wrote a bunch of business books, kind of the same idea, I got, you know, I had the bug in me for writing and and finally I was like, okay. I got an idea that that I think, you know, I could develop well, and I kinda outlined it a little bit. I've spent too many years learning about, you know, plot structure and story structure and all the things that need to go into a good story. And and I should have started way before. So if you're if you're gonna write that book people, start start typing. That's all. Somebody asked me, they said, how do you get so much writing done? I said, I drink coffee and I type words and then I do it every single day.
And 5 days a week, Monday to Friday, drop my kid off at camper at school. I go get a coffee, and I sit and I write my book. I just do it every single day.
[00:29:31] Aaron Ryan:
Let me let me blow you away here for a minute because, obviously, you'll understand what I say when I say what I say in a minute. Okay. But I'll just say it right now. I've been accused of using AI because of my book publication timeline. So or publishing timeline. So this book is the first one that I started writing in the dissonance trilogy. It's volume 1, reality. I started writing it November 21, 2023. I was finished writing it December 16, 2023. It's 328 pages. Was there a lot of editing that needed to be done? Sure. But I finished at 12 16, published it January 1st. The next one, which I don't have the new hardcover for, I just changed the covers, was published March 20th.
The third one was published May 18th. The prequel was published 6 June 6th. So you see these publishing windows growing smaller and smaller. I had a story that was bursting out of me like an alien queen, and I had to tell this story. And when you are consumed with this drive and this passion to do it, I I don't want to use AI. I will never use AI to tell my story. This is my creative gift. But it but but I've been accused of it because simply, the the publishing timelines that you'll see. Yeah. People don't understand how you can do something that fast. When you're compelled, when you got a fireman, you just do it.
[00:30:54] Narrator AI:
I mean, I wrote my book, will AI take my job from the the day I wrote the first word to the day I published it was 90 days roughly. Yeah. And that's editing with, like, 3 passes of editing. Yeah. And Yep. When I explain the actual process where I'm like, okay. Well, I outlined it first, and then I wrote the first four chapters. Those go to the first editor. I'm working on the next 4 chapters. Those other 4 come back to me. I edit them, and now I'm but the, you know, the next 4 are already at the editor and I'm doing this kind of rotation of editors
[00:31:28] Aaron Ryan:
to get through it. Then it makes sense. Right? Okay. Well, it doesn't take that long for me to do the research and write it and and It doesn't. Get it off to the editor because it's all happening at the same time. People think that it does and they make assumptions basically on that their preconceived notions of how long it takes to publish a book. But it's funny because yes, if you're talking traditional publishing that takes a really long time to get your book published. Right. Self publishing man, I'm a self starter. This is why we're you know, I wanted to do this interview. I'm a self starter. I'm deeply passionate about creative pursuits.
And as a self published man, I get to command a higher royalty. I can publish way quicker. I can maintain creative control, and those things are utterly invaluable to me Right. As an author. So when you have that kind of control and that drive and that passion, things just happen quicker. You want them to be out quicker. This guy that,
[00:32:20] Narrator AI:
that my business partner knew, he said there's something wrong with his laptop. We had to save this thing for his laptop because it had his novel that he's been writing for 11 years on it. And you know what? You are never fucking finishing that novel. If it takes you 11 years to write it 11 years. Yeah. It's just not gonna happen. I don't care what it's about. Right?
[00:32:39] Aaron Ryan:
The the fact is you gotta be, like, better done than perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Get it out there. It will fix itself. I mean, you could George Lucas size things until they're they're, you know, beating a dead horse. I actually just went back, and I've discovered in writing the prequel, which is volume 0 revelation, which actually now predates this one. This is volume 0. This is volume 1. I discovered in the timeline of some things that I had written in 1, which was written first, that there were some inaccuracies because of what I wrote in here. So I went back and I fixed the audiobook. I I re rerecorded that chapter, some segments of that chapter, reuploaded it to ACX, and you just go back and do it. But I wanted to get it out. Of course, there's gonna be errors in it that you'll find out later.
[00:33:24] Narrator AI:
Just get it done. I mean Yeah. But, I mean, even a you know, you read an Asimov book, and it still got errors. Yeah. It the most famous authors in the world had errors in their books. Right? Where inconsistencies in timeline. You know, the other thing is and this is this is kind of a trick. So if you're self published or even if you're not, as long as you have control over your account, you can upload a new copy. Right? Mhmm. So you could fix it and then upload the new copy. And then anyone that buys it from that point forward will get the fixed version. Correct. And anybody who either asks for an update, you have to go into a menu and find it, which nobody ever does, or they they kind of delete it off their device and then redownloaded it, then they'll get the new version.
[00:34:12] Aaron Ryan:
Correct. With something like IngramSpark, they're gonna charge you for that. But this is what I love about KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, is that you can upload 10 years from now a corrected version. There's no charge. Right. And I suppose that's just by virtue of the fact that they're Amazon. I think they've got enough money. But IngramSpark is gonna charge you $25 for each change that you do and and upload. Draft2Digital, no. Kobo, no. But, yeah, if you could go back in and change it later on and and just fix things, if you need to tinker, if you're that kind of George Lucas person, go ahead. But the the ability exists.
[00:34:47] Narrator AI:
Yeah. I think one of the most powerful things that that you can do when you're writing, you know, like a fictional story is you kind of get into this discovery mode where you're like, okay, I've I've kind of fleshed out the story but like, what is the character gonna say when this happens? Because you don't know that always right before you write it. You're like You kind of go through the story in your head and and you get to that point and you're like, okay, this is when You know marcus is gonna say oh shit, you know, like you just don't know what they're gonna say until the time comes.
[00:35:24] Aaron Ryan:
Exactly. And that's more of a of a a pantser approach. So for those who don't know, there's 2 different approaches primarily when you write a book. There's a a plotter or a planner and a pantser flying by the seat of your pants. I'm so much more of a pantser. I'm so much more organic in my storytelling. And the characters, I feel, need to lead you in a way. You can run into different things, and the spontaneity is what life is all about. We run into things that are not planned. How we deal with them reveals our character. How we deal with them then sets the stage for, you know, the subsequent events that are gonna happen in our life. And I I really appreciate that more than just every single bullet point detail laid out. Now granted, if you don't have guideposts or mile markers along their journey, they're wandering bereft of any kind of aim or purpose really for that. So it's really good to if you're gonna be an organic writer, to have at least some points of destination along the way. So they know they're going from a to b, not a to, I don't know, 7. And then 2, and then maybe 9 and pound.
It's just easier that way.
[00:36:33] Narrator AI:
Yeah. I had a interesting thing along the ways. I kind of I planned out what was gonna happen in my book, and then I started writing it. And then I had a couple ideas where I was like, okay. You know what? That's it's a good enough idea to go back and kind of weave this back into the story. Yeah, and And then once I did that there was a lot of like, okay I need to go back and fix this and then I gotta reread this to make sure I took you know, it took this into account and and so the process is so much longer than writing a non fiction book You know, absolutely My nonfiction books, I was like knocking them out in 90 days.
For me, I know, you know, you have been writing your books pretty quickly. Right? And I assume you're spending, you know, several hours a day at least on writing to to keep up that schedule. Right? I just I got, you know, I got 2 businesses I'm running, so I can't, you know, put that much time into it. Otherwise, I would just write all day, which that's my I think that may be part of my retirement plan is, you know, I I don't think I'm gonna get rich writing books, but I'm gonna get rich working on other stuff and then use my time to write books after.
[00:37:40] Aaron Ryan:
Yeah. Well, I don't think you're gonna get rich unless you're Tolkien, and he's dead. So anyway. That's right.
[00:37:45] Narrator AI:
I or Suzanne Collins or, you know, Rowling or something like that. Or that guy that writes those kids books about farts. Oh my god. I heard him on a podcast too, and he's got, like, 60 books or something out, and he makes I don't know. Like, he he was selling, like, 12,000 copies a month or something, and I'm like, oh, good lord.
[00:38:03] Aaron Ryan:
That's 1,000,000 of dollars. As a musician, that's one of the things that I I have an 8 and a 5 year old. I have 8 5 year old sons. Yeah. So as a musician, I wrote some really I've been a, you know, musician since, well, I don't know, early early nineties, late eighties, whatever. And and I love making music. I love the art of creating, but I mean music is a big passion of mine. So I just I just produced, kind of a, a curtain call, siren song CD because I don't think I'm gonna do anymore. But it was so good, and the music is so heartfelt, and it was powerfully produced. I produced it myself for the very first time. And I was so happy with this, and and and, you know, I want my kids to hear it and enjoy it. But what do they want? They'll ask Alexa for Skibbity Toilet. Right. You know? Or they want these fart songs and poop songs, and it's like, really? Those It's always toilet humor.
I'm in the wrong genre.
[00:38:54] Narrator AI:
My daughter's 8 also. She's a big fan of Little Big, but she gotta kinda watch which ones. I I think, you know, if your kids watch any YouTube at all, they've they've come across Little Big. Well, okay. So Little Big wrote the song Skibbity, which is what created the slang term skibbidi that was used for skibbidi toilet. Okay. There we go. Skibbidi was like, I don't know, like a made up word for something probably inappropriate for children, but it was a funny video and stuff and has, like, I don't know, like, a 100,000,000 views or something ridiculous.
[00:39:27] Aaron Ryan:
Where's the
[00:39:29] Narrator AI:
best place for people to get the, dissonance quadrilogy of books?
[00:39:34] Aaron Ryan:
Yes. Or if you are quadrilogically challenged, you can just use the word tetralogy. Tetralogy is actually more appropriate for a a series of 4 books than it'd be pentology for 5. You know, we're that's 1 to grow on for today. That was free. But, basically, you could go to dissonancetheseries.com, but an easier way to rec to remember is just go to get these books.com. I got that domain and forwards there. So dissonancetheseries. Dissonance series in and of itself, or you can simply visit author erinryan.com, which has links to dissonance and all the books and everything else like that. And all social media links are there as well.
[00:40:18] Narrator AI:
Perfect. Alright. Aaron, I got one more question for you that that I thought I would sneak in at the end. Is it about cheeseburgers? It is not. I know that would have been a good one, and and that's kind of an inside joke, you know, on on structured podcasts, you know, that have questions like that. My question was, as a musician, where do you land on the Suno, UDL AI music generating software?
[00:40:45] Aaron Ryan:
So I have I've actually had shirts made that say if it ain't human, it ain't for me. And in the ain't, each of those is capital AI in each of those. I'm a staunch believer that creativity is the most natural fundamental gift we have. We I'm a Christian. God created. We create. It's how we reflect that. And the ability to take something and and or nothing and make it something, how cool is that? Books, poetry, music, song, doesn't matter. Whatever you make, you know, you were able to do that with you. When you use assistance or as I call it, cheats, I'm gonna, you know, rub people the wrong way that way. If you use cheats that way to help accomplish your goal, then it really wasn't you who created that a 100%. You've actually used tools to help you create. Now the argument could be made.
Well, you have to have a chisel in order to to sculpt this, or you have to use a hammer to create that. Those are tools and so is AI. In the medical field, great. If you can use AI to help save someone's life, perfect. If it you can use it for computer technology to help assist us in under in education, great. However, the the ability to create is something I never wanna compromise, and music is right there in that as well. I just don't And I don't advocate for it. I have I have these levels
[00:42:09] Narrator AI:
of music in my brain where I'm like, there's a lot of people making, quote, music. What they've done is used a digitizer because they don't know how to sing in key. And, you know, they've they've put used samples because they don't know how to play any instruments and they've put all that together and they're like, look, I made a song. Yeah. I'm like, did you did you really more? But then also those same people are turning around and they're looking at people who just you know typed in a bunch of stuff and and did some testing with Suno or udio and they're like, that's not really creating music, you know, so there's definitely these kind of levels in in music creation. I think as a, you know, as personally as a musician, I have no problem with AI music generations.
I guarantee it. Absolutely mark my words. Some at least chart topping, if not number 1 song, is gonna be out that came that was generated by an AI system soon. And I think Yeah. I think someone is going to make it, put it out, say it's from their band, and then after the fact, come out and say they generated it. That's already happened in the photography world. The I forget his name, but the photographer who actually competed in that contest
[00:43:27] Aaron Ryan:
submitted a photo, revealed he won, revealed later that it was AI. And, you know, the community's in uproar. People are so surprised.
[00:43:35] Narrator AI:
It'll happen for sure. Did you see the opposite last week? Somebody entered a actual photo in an AI photo contest and won. Oh, wow. So they did the reverse. Interesting. That's right. Trickery. Very interesting. Alright, Aaron. It's been a pleasure. I love chatting with you, and, I can't wait to read your book. There's so much going on. It's it's a tough, tough world out there with the AI trying to figure out, you know, where it's going, what's happening, and and where it's good and where it's not.
[00:44:07] Aaron Ryan:
So keep creating. Save humanity.
[00:44:09] Narrator AI:
That's right. Alright, everybody. Have a great day.
[00:44:12] Aaron Ryan:
Thank you.
[00:44:16] Narrator AI:
Remember to tap like, subscribe, and follow to never miss a show. This voice over used to be done by a human, but now it is synthetic. Oh la la. If you want to know if your job or business is safe from disruption read Matt's new book Will AI Take My Job? Predictions about AI in corporations, small business and the workplace. Available now on Amazon. Trust me, it'll be worth it. Voice is smooth and bright.
[00:44:47] Narrator AI:
Take dreams to aid and fly. Futures to explore. Open every door.
