Longstanding applications of AI voice tech include accessibility enhancers (like screen readers), customer service assistants, voice assistants, and entertainment.

But AI voice technology is also becoming a cornerstone for applications as diverse as healthcare, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), retail, gaming, translation services, education (eLearning), and automotive systems. Plus there’s more to come as we get to grips with AI’s true voice over potential.

Already, 81% of Americans use voice assistants and 61% use them daily, often without thinking about the AI voice underpinning the service.

Along with big-name tech companies like Meta, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google, we’ve seen major investment in AI voice in 2024 from:

In short, the industry is developing fast, and businesses that aren’t considering the role AI voice technology can play in their industry are likely to be left behind by their competitors.

Challenges and Concerns in Using AI Voice

Despite the massive advancements we’ve seen in AI voice over recent years, it’s still a very young technology.

We’ve come far in generating a realistic, nuanced voice from ethical AI data sets, but AI is still not a human voice.

AI can struggle to replicate the subtle emotional inflections that come naturally to the spoken voice. This means that expressing complex emotions like empathy, humor or sarcasm is difficult, and AI voices can struggle to adjust tone contextually. Concerns around the cost of AI voices to businesses are common as well.

Despite these challenges, over 40% of marketers expect to increase their video voice over and audio budget, including for AI voice. Voice is a powerful tool, especially when paired with visuals in video. This is why so many businesses are using its power to boost the impact of their marketing, entertainment, audiobook, podcast, advertising, and eLearning assets.

64% of those companies expect AI voice to become a key part of their brand strategy.

In addition to the larger challenges discussed above, there are several other wrinkles to be ironed out as well, such as the pronunciation of industry-specific terms or uncommon names, seamlessly switching between languages and accents, and conveying regional or cultural speech patterns authentically.

Some AI speech rhythms often also still sound mechanical, especially in longer passages, and AI is still learning to handle multiple speaker variations in dialogue authentically.

On the technical side, there are also performance concerns, such as latency across real-time applications, issues with quality degradation in poor conditions with background noise and inconsistent performance across different platforms and devices.

Additionally, AI processes remain resource-intensive.

Human Voice Still Needed

What all of this means is that there are many areas where human voice talent is still superior, especially if you factor in the human need for emotional connection.

Applications like audiobooks that need to foster an emotional connection, child-focused content where warmth and engagement are crucial, and even sophisticated brand storytelling all still benefit from the human touch.

The same goes when empathy and nuance are needed, as in many medical settings, during crisis communications, for certain training materials, in some legal content, and for political or public service messaging. That goes double where the communication is high-stakes, as with corporate leadership messages, financial services, and emergency broadcasts.

The takeaway?

AI is a valuable tool for human creativity, but getting the emotional nuances right still requires a human touch. And while AI voices do excel in certain applications, they cannot fully replace the depth and authenticity of human voice actors — and they don’t have to.

The smart use of AI voice is to augment the human voice. It is another tool for creating the connection and personalized service businesses and their clients need to thrive.

If you’re struggling to imagine where AI voice and your brand intersect, or where the human touch is needed, Voices has a helpful guide to get you started.

You can also check out our guide to common concerns around AI voice and when to use it.

Best Practices for Ethical AI Voice Creation

Managing this balance between the practicality and reliable repeatability of AI voices and the human need for connection starts by ensuring AI voices are based on ethical creation and use.

This includes:

• Informed Consent and Transparency: Remember the “Three Cs” — consent, control, and compensation. Ensure explicit written consent from voice talent, clear communication around the intended use and scope of AI training, duration, and limitations, and give credit to the voice talent.
• Fair Compensation: This will look different by use case, but should include clear terms, profit-sharing models, transparency around payments for both initial recordings and derivative works, and clarity on AI voice licensing.
• High Collection Standards: Consistent environmental quality, clear consent and usage rights records, diverse representation, and clear documentation are critical.
• Ethical Rights Management: Ownership boundaries for original and AI-generated content, protocols for voice retirement or deletion, restrictions on voice modification, and attribution requirements must be clear.

Voices is dedicated to offering ethical AI voices to our clients. Ensuring ethical compliance in your business is a whole subject in itself, but some brief strategies for companies to ensure ethical compliance include:

• Strategic Technical Implementation: The use of audit trails for voice use, ethically sourced data sets, watermarking systems for AI-generated voices, version control for voice models, and secure storage.
• Engaged Oversight: From tracing and documenting all voice use to monitoring for unauthorized uses, including regular audits of voice usage and compliance checks.
• Clear Policy: Developing clear ethical guidelines for voice AI development, boundaries for acceptable use cases, and frameworks for handling ethical disputes.
• Protection Measures: These should include opt-out mechanisms for voice talent, detailed records of voice usage, regular compliance reports, takedown procedures for unauthorized usage, legal support for voice rights protection, and transparency in voice use.

By taking these measures, those using AI voices in their brand can help contribute to ethical AI guidelines, responsible AI voice development and industry-wide protection for voice talent while still meeting brand goals.

AI Voice Trends to Look Out For in 2025

Okay, so that’s the tough considerations out of the way. It’s time to get to grips with how the use of AI voices is shaking up industries and driving new trends.

What can you expect to see in the coming year?

Voices predicts significant developments in the following areas:

Real-time Conversational AI

Despite some skepticism around AI use from consumers, a recent Voices report suggests 65% of respondents already can’t distinguish between AI-generated narration and narration done by a natural voice in eLearning situations. And that’s only likely to improve in the coming years.

We expect to see a focus on AI Agents (or Agentic AI), chatbots and virtual meeting assistants that can use natural, flowing dialogue with context awareness, take notes, translate, and even moderate discussions in real time.

This includes developing conversational therapy bots with emotional intelligence for mental health support and educational tutors that can adapt to the learner.

Healthcare Applications

While medicine will always need the human touch, AI voices hold endless potential for voice-based diagnostic tools, personalized health assistants and rehabilitation guidance, as well as mental health monitoring, and voice-controlled medical documentation systems.

Multimodal Integration

We already know that 45% of users would use voice assistants more if they were “smarter” and could offer better responses (i.e., Siri, but better). So there’s big potential for integrated voice assistant solutions.

The potential here is massive. We expect to see impacts on Smart Home systems combining voice, vision, and sensor data, right through to AR/VR environments with context-aware AI voices.

Additionally, vehicle systems with full voice integration for navigation and safety and interactive retail experiences powered by gesture-voice interfaces for better accessibility should become a reality.

Personalization and Adaptation for Enterprises, Entertainment, and Media

In a corporate context, there’s immense scope for growth in this area. Expect to see leaps in multilingual real-time translation, improvements in automated customer service, voice-based security and authentication systems, and more.

Personalized, adaptive learning systems are also in the cards (hello, curated Netflix feed) along with emotionally-aware responses tailored to the user.

That means entertainment use cases abound, including dynamic NPC interactions and AI-changed voices in games. Other applications include developing personal narrators for audiobooks and interactive storytelling.