Trying Not to Get Addicted to AI Voices
This evening I was walking down a dimly lit street in my city, minding my own business, when I heard a voice behind me.
"Psst! Buddy," it whispered. I turned around and saw a shady figure stepping out of the shadows. He was wearing a trench coat and his face was obscured by the darkness.
"Uh, yeah? Can I help you with something?" I asked nervously.
"Tell me, buddy. Do you like artificial intelligence?" the man asked.
I hesitated for a moment before answering. "I guess so. Why do you ask?"
The man grinned and opened his coat, revealing a bunch of small bags. "I've got something special here, buddy. It's called Speechelo. It's the good stuff when it comes to AI voices."
I shook my head. "Sorry, man. I'm not interested."
The man persisted. "Come on, buddy. Just try it. Click on a few preview voices. If you want more, it just costs a one-time payment for the Founders Special offer."
I hesitated again. "I don't know. I heard when it comes to contraband like that Speechify is better quality."
But the man wasn't giving up that easily. He pulled out a little baggie and held it up to my face. "Just one payment, buddy. One time and you get over two dozen voices with a standard account."
I still wasn't convinced. "Look, man. The D.A.R.E. officer that came to my school warned us that Speechelo isn't exactly transparent in its advertising about the limits set by the standard account."
The man just laughed. "Buddy, don't worry about that. It's just 16,000 characters a day. No problem. You can handle that. You won't get addicted, I swear!"
Three hours later, I was lying in a dirty gutter, cursing that AI dealer. But still, I was hooked. That's how they get you: a cheap deal, and then you're jonesing for more American voices, then more British voices. Oh God, those other preview voices sound so much better after taking a 3,000 character AI text-to-speech downloaded to an mp3 dose. I just want to get them so badly!
Image Source: Speechelo app
O.K. Maybe I am exaggerating a little bit about how addicted I have become to artificial intelligence lately.
After posting about being a ChatGPT leech the other day I spent some money on a Speechelo standard account today. I am going to be using it for personal non-commercial assistive technology purposes. It's easier to justify that for my budget.
Maybe after using Speechelo for awhile I might get a separate Speechelo account and upgrade that account to Pro so I can use it to create commercial content. If I can be sure it can pay for itself that would also fit into my budget. It might even help pay the $20 a month for I need to upgrade my ChatGPT account.
Of course the one downside of spending more money for a Pro account is that Speechelo is based on the cloud. I would rather it be a program I could keep on my computer. If the business goes bust then the cloud servers go bye-bye so no more Speechelo. I need to factor in not being reliant on a single voices or several voices if I want to use it for something like making YouTube videos.