10 Comments

Love this!

Expand full comment

Thank you, Michele!

Expand full comment

OMG, now I’m even more CONVINCED after looking at your feed that you need to visit Libre lit. Their second issue is coming out in a couple days and it’s all Plath related. In case you missed my last message, here is the link!

www.librelit.com

Expand full comment

I love this!

Expand full comment

Hi Petra I think this is really good. I listened to this one do you mind me asking is this you narrating? Thank you.

Expand full comment

Thanks so much, Ben. And no, that’s not me narrating, it’s just an accessibility feature I’m using for those who’d like a readout. But you *can* hear my voice on some of the older podcasts on here (I just stopped doing them because it took up so much time, plus I’m I guess I’m a writer at heart and always had trouble connecting to podcasts as a medium. Which is maybe strange considering I’m a musician and generally live audio. Or maybe not 🤣).

Expand full comment

Ah thanks Petra, it's really good so I expect it is AI generated. I recently heard a podcast generated by Google's Notebook LM from some text with two speakers, a male and a female "radio host" and it was indistinguishable from a real broadcast. I don't like listening to the sound of my own voice so I think it's normal. I'm also a musician (guitars). I think the next thing in this area will be generating audio content from text and using a voice of your choice, like your own, if you want :¬)

Expand full comment

I don’t use the Substack-native voiceover feature because it still sounds fairly “uncanny valley” to me, so I’m using a different program. And there *is* the option to model it on my own voice, but I tried it and it gave me the creeps 🤣 It sounds like me but it also doesn’t, if that makes any sense. And it strips away my accent (which is very recognisable because I’m bilingual and spent the first 30 years of my life outside the UK), which is just a big no for me. I’ve learned to like my voice (singer/actor) over so many decades, so I guess I’m a bit prickly when it gets turned into something stripped of all the individual quirks.

Expand full comment

Hi Petra - I totally understand, I listened to one of your earlier podcasts and you have a unique accent, it sounds like you have picked up an irish and/or scottish lilt which is unusual and really nice...I'm not surprised the AI is not able to replicate because it will have been "trained" on more common accents, which I suppose is good right? :¬)

Expand full comment

It is Scottish indeed. Quite attached to keeping it 🤣

Expand full comment