# Man and Machine: The First Voice Was the Wrong Voice

![Man and Machine: The First Voice Was the Wrong Voice](/writing/man-and-machine/the-first-voice-was-the-wrong-voice/assets/hero.jpg)

I asked Oscar, my personal AI agent, to help with an essay video\. When it came to the narration, I pushed back: “That voice is no good\. We need a human voice sample\.”

Oscar agreed it sounded robotic\. It had defaulted to the Mac’s system voice, even though we already had other options\. “I should have auditioned a short sample first,” it said\.

It pointed me to an earlier synthetic sample based on my own voice and asked whether I meant that kind of sound or an actual person recording\. I asked about the voices available through the local models and subscriptions we already had\.

That question changed the next step\. Oscar proposed a short audition using the same paragraph in a clone of my voice and two stock synthetic voices\. “Give those a shot,” I said\.

Oscar then delivered three fresh samples, generated locally, with matched playback levels and no music\. There were now actual alternatives to compare, rather than another discussion about which tools might work\.

The tools were already there\. What changed the work was saying no to the first voice and asking what else we could use\. That took us from a default I’d rejected to three short auditions, without buying another subscription\.

\-dg

\#ManAndMachine \#PersonalAI

## Sources

- [Original LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7517925496269996034/)