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In this special bonus/additional episode, released between regular weekly episodes of the podcast, Mark has a conversation with Joanna Penn about emerging digital A.I. technologies and what it means for writers.
The initial conversation is using the words that Mark and Joanna would share in conversation, but the voice was generated using their respective Voice Doubles from Descript OverDub.
After the AI Voice Double conversation, the real Mark and Joanna share their thoughts and reflections on the conversation, the process behind creating the computer-generated conversation and what it all means for the publishing and writing communities.

Joanna Penn writes non-fiction for authors and is an award-nominated, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F.Penn. She’s a podcaster and an award-winning creative entrepreneur. Her site, TheCreativePenn.com has been voted in the Top 100 sites for writers by Writer’s Digest.
Links of Interest:
- The Creative Penn
- The Creative Penn Special Episode: AI And Creativity Update: A Voice Double Conversation Featuring Joanna Penn And Mark Leslie Lefebvre
- Episode 002 – Living the Healthy Writer’s Life with Joanna Penn
- Episode 103 – 15 Takeaways from the WMG Publishing Master Class
- The Creative Penn Podcast – Episode 482 – How to Get Your Book Into Libraries and Bookstores with Mark Leslie Lefebvre
- Descript
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
Below is an Automated Transcription (Has not been human-edited/verified).
VD Mark: hello, Reflectives. Welcome to episode 148 of the stark reflections on writing and publishing podcast. This is your host, Mark. Leslie LaFave.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: No, no, no, no. That, that was not your host. This is your host, Mark. Leslie LaFave. What you just heard was my voice double from descript overdub. This is a very special episode.
As I said earlier, this is an episode in which Joanna Penn and I get to have a conversation about AI voice, but we do it in our voice doubles from descript audio. No, Joe and I have had beta accounts with descript overdub for quite a while now. And we’ve been able to experiment with it and have a lot of fun with it.
It is now available for anyone to use. You can use descript overdub. You can train your voice and it’s quite a bit easier now than it was in the earlier days. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to train your voice and what Joe and I thought we would do to sort of celebrate this and, and to discuss it because we’re both fascinated by what this means, what these emerging technologies means, what, what, what the AI and all of the tools, what that could mean.
Both the pros and the cons for the creative. And writing communities. And so Joe and I decided to have a conversation about it, and that’s what you’re going to hear. So without further ado, let’s get into the conversation of Joe and I are at least our voice doubles having this conversation. And then after the voice, double fake computer, Joe and computer Mark.
Conversation, which is actually our words, just to computer using our voices or in trying to integrate our conversation, Joe and I actually have a real conversation where we reflect on that. Now this is a special, because this is a period, obviously in the stark reflections podcast for episode 148, and it will be also appearing simultaneously in the creative Penn podcast.
Joe’s. Long running superstar podcast in episode 500 and X w wherever it happens to be, uh, falling, but that’s a, we’ll probably be releasing the episodes pretty much close to one another with, um, obviously the same AI AI, as well as the same conversation. But then of course we have our own intros and outros and all that fun stuff.
But anyways, without further ado, here’s voice double Mark and voice double Joanna Penn.
[BUMPER MUSIC]
VD Joanna: Hi, Mark.
VD Mark: Hey Joe, how are you doing?
VD Joanna: I’m good. So how’s lockdown where you are. How are things in Canada?
VD Mark: Lockdown has actually allowed me to discover new types of creativity in myself, where I seem to have prevented myself from writing prose, but I rediscovered the joy of doing parody videos and experimenting with different forms of creativity.
So I have the energy inside me to tell story. To want to share and amuse and entertain. And I redirected it into a different output that satisfied that part of my soul that needs to write. And now I’m back writing again, but while I was struggling, it was really good to have that outlet.
VD Joanna: I also struggled at the beginning and I did a flurry of business activities.
I made a couple of online courses, including one on turning what you know, into an online course. Which was, you know, useful and also very matter. Yes, very meta and also made some money. So that was really good because the first instinct is the survival instinct, which is, I just need to make some more money in order to survive this, whatever this is.
And then there’s that period of, okay, this isn’t just over quickly and the zombie apocalypse has not arrived. And now I need to finish that novel. I did manage to change up my creative routine and to finish map of the impossible, but we are talking about artificial intelligence today because we are both enthusiasts, but there are clearly positives and challenges.
What do you think are some of the positive things that AI could bring to?
VD Mark: I think it could help us with some of the processes that may be redundant. Or take too much time. If we can leverage those tools for the things that will help us in free us up to do the more human creative stuff. That can be a really good thing.
We can get more done. We can create more. We can produce more.
VD Joanna: Yes. I agree that it’s going to help us. And I think AI as a tool is what we need to focus on in the same way that we do research with the internet. We use Scrivener to write. We use vellum for formatting. We use the internet and all the wonderful tools like drafted digital and lots of other wonderful companies who help us blush without these tools.
We would not be able to reach people with our books. Think about it, similar to the internet. If we wind the clock back to the internet of 1986 or even 1995, we didn’t know then what it was going to turn into now, the internet is this wonderful, amazing, incredible place that we all spend a lot of time on and use to create.
And learn and entertain ourselves. And it’s also the cesspool of humanity, so we can use it either way.
VD Mark: Also, when the ebook came out, there was a lot of fear in the book industry about the ebook killing the print book, but it didn’t, it only added to the possibilities of what a book could be. It expanded it and like vinyl, the print book is still doing well and also expanding in new formats.
So I think that if we approach artificial intelligence with the same optimism, And yet with a bit of caution, we can use it as a tool that benefits us in the long run. I want to be part of the disruption, not be the disrupted
VD Joanna: Good slogan. You should put that on a tee shirt. I think being part of the disruption is a really good way to look at it.
And also. Putting a positive spin on creativity. Creativity often involves some form of destruction and we may have to destroy some of our own practices in order to move into the new way of doing things. I think one of the biggest shakeups we need is a copyright law, so that machine learning can incorporate modern bodies of creative work and still reward the creator.
I think that’s probably one of the biggest issues right now. In order to incorporate all the different voices in the world, we’re going to need to train the big data algorithms on much more, very data. But again, we need authors to be rewarded. I would like to see an overhaul of copyright law for an era of artificial intelligence, so that we get some kind of micropayment for the use of training data, because GPT three is not plagiarizing.
This is the huge shift I think because if GPT three is not plagiarizing. And we’ve seen a lot of examples of plagiarism in the author community. We’re going to see a lot more books being produced by these AI content farms. Where our work is used for training and it’s not plagiarized. That’s why copyright law needs to be overhauled.
Do you think the publishing industry is ready for that?
VD Mark: No. The publishing industry is not they’re playing ostrich and are continuing to, even during this pandemic, they haven’t even fully embraced print on demand properly for distribution. I think blockchain and those technologies are going to be a critical component of ensuring that copyright can be protected in the future.
VD Joanna: One of the other positives is that many authors don’t enjoy the marketing side. And I have found in particular with Amazon ads where the author brand is very clear, the auto ads work and make money. Once they’ve optimized themselves. In that way, we are already using artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to advertise.
That is hopefully a sign of what is to come around discoverability, which is one of the perennial issues for authors. I would also like to see a more intelligent artificial intelligence that can discern the emotional resonance of a book and recommend other books that offer a similar, emotional experience. We are missing that right now.
VD Mark: I agree. And I am really disappointed because it was almost 10 years ago when I saw the first iteration of companies like booklet and books, like the bestseller code. I’m disappointed that we haven’t yet been able to leverage those tools. Because rather than an Amazon marketing ad where you’re manually contriving stuff, manually manipulating things that may not be reality, there should go to the heart of how that book makes you feel that could potentially reduce the gamification and the BS that we have to deal with now where some books are well marketed, but are not that good and books that are fantastic, maybe undiscovered.
VD Joanna: To wrap this up, if people want to surf this change rather than get drowned in it. What is your number one recommendation for authors?
VD Mark: Step back and look at artificial intelligence with your business hat on rather than with your emotional writer, hat, our emotional writer, hats can really mess us up and prevent us from understanding and embracing the technology.
What do you think?
VD Joanna: I come back to the importance of Kevin Kelly’s 1000 true fans. If the market is going to get more and more and more fragmented, we need to be okay with living in the long tail and writing what we love and selling books. And exciting readers in the little area that we write in double down on being human.
We can’t beat the machine, but we can work with the machine to create something more exciting for our collective feature.
VD Mark: That was beautiful.
[BUMPER MUSIC]
Joanna Penn: Mark. We did our recording.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah, that was, um, it was interesting to see.
Joanna Penn: So yeah, so honestly, like what did you think of your voice?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: So I think my voice still sounds a little stilted and awkward.
And your sounds really well done. It’s almost as if, you know, you did way better training and I’m not sure. What that was because the training was the same. Right. Um, did you do the full 40 minutes?
Joanna Penn: 30 minutes. Okay. So let’s explain to everyone listening. So basically we are both, uh, we both have descript.com, which is basically you can, you can download the software and then they have a, an overdub tutorial, which is, you essentially have to read the Wizard of Oz.
Right. Um, the, the story, and it tells you, you know, you’ve recorded five minutes, 10 minutes.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Wait. You got The Wizard of Oz?
Joanna Penn: Yes. What did you get?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: I got this classic, like, um, you know, 1800s snowman story about this snowman that, uh, this little snow girl that’s these kids built and it’s from Quebec. Like it was like an old classic Canadian story. Uh, and, and, and I had to read the whole story and it was fascinating cause I’d never heard it before. I have no idea who wrote it. It’s obviously public domain.
Joanna Penn: Well, okay. So that’s interesting. So we both got different stories and I actually found the wizard of Oz, uh, slightly difficult, because as you say, it’s definitely all the language and it’s not very good story.
And there wasn’t actually much. Dialogue. And so when I was reading it, it’s funny say that my voice sounds better. I thought my voice was very good. I thought the most stilted bit was okay. Greetings, but the longer sections we’re very, we’re actually pretty good in some parts. I was like, worried. That actually sounds just like me because it’s my words as well.
But in doing the training, I. I probably overreacted. So maybe that’s what you did wrong.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: I very much, yeah, I did. I did. Cause there were voices and I did the little boy’s voice in the little girl’s voice in the mom’s voice, in the dad’s voice.
Joanna Penn: Okay. Okay. No, you did too much then. Cause it’s still meant to be your voice.
So I didn’t do special voices. I didn’t. Yeah. Put my voice up a pitch or down a pitch. I just read it, but with feeling so I think maybe you should redo your data and don’t do little girls and guys voices,
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Just because you don’t like my little boy voice. It’s like, that sounds more like Mickey mouse, but Disney’s going to come after us.
Joanna Penn: That’s the thing we, uh, it’s training your voice. As Mark, not your, not your ability to do different voices.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah. No, I didn’t. I just changed the inflection a little bit and raised it a tiny bit. So, but yeah, you’re right. That probably messed it up.
Joanna Penn: Well, it might’ve done, but equally. I mean, I, this is just to be clear to people.
This was the third iteration for both of us, right? Yeah. Yeah. But the difference was that the last we were in the beta section before, and they kind of did it, especially for us and used our voices in training sessions. And now it’s open to everyone. So, and you know, if you get the script, I think you can even get it free for 15 day, 14 days or whatever it is, and you can try it out.
And then if you want to keep using the voice and it can only be your voice, it’s like it just to be clear, we both in sections and then you edited it together. Yeah. So, you know, it’s not like I got your voice and made up your words and put it with mine. Like that’s not possible yet, but just in overall, did you get Liz to listen to it or has anyone else heard yours heard it yet?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: I was telling her about it last night at dinner, but I haven’t shared it yet. I think some of the things that I thought were weird was when I, um, when you were saying something and I jokingly said very meta. I couldn’t figure out, because again, you, sometimes you have to AI, for example, you had to spell it out so that the computer would read it properly like LaFave.
Uh, I didn’t use it there, but in previous iterations I’ve had to spell it so that it sounds differently, which is what it would come out. Like most people. Um, so that, that was, uh, that was interesting. But the, the previous times I was actually having a conversation with Liz when she was in the other room and I was typing it in and overdub was responding to her and she thought she was talking to me.
Joanna Penn: Wow. Okay. And, well, I got Jonathan to listen to our conversation and he was like, yeah, that was really weird. And cause he’s, he’s met you and spoken to you and heard you on podcasts and things. So he knows your voice and I eat, I think it’s quite stunning. Like I think it’s probably, I would say with my voice, it, it’s probably 80% now. What do you think you’re working with?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You’re at 80%. Maybe I’m at 70. Hmm. It’s interesting though.
Joanna Penn: I definitely, I think as I listened a bit longer, like if you listened to the whole thing and you settle into it, it’s, uh, you kind of get over, uh, Jonathan said, Oh, it’s like, there was a bad connection on Skype.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Exactly. And we’re all used to that right now. Yeah, exactly.
Joanna Penn: So I wonder if, uh, anyway, I guess the point is that we did that, and you mentioned a few words there. Um, the, the trick on the AI thing is, cause I normally just write it. Capital A capital I is that they were meant to be dots between a, so a dot I dot or period, or full stop, whatever you’d say in your country.
Um, and then a couple of things, I still can’t get it to say creative. So I normally say hello, creatives.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah. And that’s what I was wondering why you altered that because when we, so we, we recorded our own conversation.
Joanna Penn: Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: And then you transcribed it. Or had a system transcribe it, and then we tweaked it a little bit because there were some awkward things that we had said.
Um, and then, and then you fed your lines into, into descript and I did the same thing. And then, and then I patched them together like that. That was the overall process.
Joanna Penn: Yeah, exactly. And as you say, I had to, it won’t say it says creativity, but it doesn’t say creatives. It says creatives and I could not.
And it says. Hello creatives. And I’m like, yeah, this is a big thing that I say I can’t use that. So I changed it. Yeah. Authors and, um, I’ve sent it to Descript. Yeah. So this is a bug I picked this bug up before that it can say creativity but not creative. So really interesting. And then also it wouldn’t say mass markets, it kept going Moss.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah. Is it because I’m looking at the script? Cause I was following the script while I was listening to the voices to make sure I could patch it together. Then as I was following, when I went Oh, there that she tweaked that obviously there was a problem with that.
Joanna Penn: but isn’t that interesting because if we think about this sort of moving it forward into the future, we’ve talked, both of us have talked about writing for audio and writing for a narrator.
And what we were doing there is tweaking our language. For an AI narrator, so that it, and also what I ended up doing. I don’t know if you, I put, um, uh, more punctuation in, so I might have done a dash for a longer breath or a space to kind of separate the text more. So there was a longer pause. Did you do that?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah, I did a little bit of that because I would first, what I love about it is you, you copy and paste or type it in, and then it tells you how many minutes it’s gonna take to do it. And it doesn’t really take that long. And then I listened to it and then I adjusted, right? You’re all going to tweak this.
I’m going to put a pause here or I’m going to change the spelling. So C cause even with the, uh, the very meta, I tried about six different ways. Yeah. And I think I spelled Metta differently. And then I put an exclamation point. Then I tried it with a question Mark. Cause, cause the intonation of my voice just didn’t yeah.
I was almost tempted to do my real voice in there. Sneak it in.
Joanna Penn: No that’s cheating.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: I think I changed it to met dash a. I did met a or something like that.
Joanna Penn: Ah, there we go. But this is, this is what’s interesting, right? Because I have rewritten my own, uh, writing for my own narration. And this felt like, Oh, I’m adjusting the way I see things in order to fit the voice stubble and the little quirks of it, which is.
Again, really, really interesting. And in fact, when you work with a professional moderator, so I’ve worked with American narrators and I’ve had to adjust in inverted commerce, their pronunciation. So that is not exactly a, an unusual thing. It’s just that we did it with this voice devil. Yeah. And, and, and it’s funny when you, when, when I think about voice and I think about altering the way.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: You ask for things or, right. So when you think about, when you’re communicating with Alexa or Google, right, you, you can’t just say it in normal. Human talk, you have to begin with, Hey X, I don’t want to trigger it my system. And, um, you know, tell me my day or, or play this or whatever. Right. So we’re already adjusting in, in other ways with how we interact with AI.
Joanna Penn: Yeah, and I think it’s, this is also interesting cause both of you and I have talked about what we’re excited about because even in our, even in our AI discussion previously about how we’re exciting about maybe doing audio dramas, and we’ve just given an example of putting two voices together in a conversation.
Yeah. And we’ve created something that it’s definitely not, you know, audio book ready or voice, you know, audio drama ready, but it’s still interesting. So what, what do you think, uh, in terms of a voice market and this kind of thing being much more mainstream? What, what should we, what, what date should we put our, put our fingers in on like, say this is, this will happen.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: I’m thinking by 2021, uh, only because you and I have seen this technologies sky rocket in the past couple of years, right? From the very first iteration to where we are now is phenomenal.
Joanna Penn: Just to be clear. We’re recording this in the middle of August, 2020. So you reckon within six to 12 months, the 12 months, I think we’ll probably be there.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Which, which also, you know, I’m, I’m optimistic about that, but I’m also concerned because you know, I, you and I obviously want to be. And on the ground floor and checking it out early days. Cause you know, I’ve been fascinated for years with this, but we want to make sure that there’s some control, right.
Joanna Penn: That it’s not, um, it’s not pure chaos. Yeah, absolutely. Isn’t it? Yeah, it is. And both of us have a, you know, we have a chance to put these voices out in the wider sense, and we’re not neither of us going to at this point in time. Um, I definitely feel like I want to control my voice given how good it is already.
And the fact that I think it does sound like me. I’m actually going to record something and send it to my mum and say, mum, This is, this is not me speaking. And, uh, you know, I want her to be aware and this, this I think is the reason you and I also get into this is because if we don’t engage with the technology and deny its existence and just say, Oh, that won’t affect us.
Right. Wait effect authors. Right. It’s fine. Then this rise of deep fakes of which it is. Incredible at this point already, you know, people have to be aware that this stuff can be faked. And I feel like, you know, older people particularly, but let’s face it. We’re older people.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Me more than you, of course.
Joanna Penn: Yeah. I think young, you know, younger – your son probably totally understands about deep fakes and understands that these things can happen, but it may be, you know, the teachers that lizard school or, you know, some of the. Authors we meet who were like, no way. I’ll never be good enough. But I think as you say, I’m probably more going to say 18 months and I don’t normally say longer period, but I I’m picking 20, 22, um, for when this becomes more mainstream and that maybe we have voice markets.
Maybe we have more actual AI narration of. Uh, more stuff. I mean, obviously that’s available now, but I think it will be, but it will become much more common.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah. And I mean, I plan on experimenting with this. I mean, I did a, I self narrated, The 7 P’s of Publishing Success because it’s relatively short.
It’s only about 14,000 words. And then I had a, Jim Kukral’s company do Brian British male voice for 99 cents. And I’m thinking, well, why don’t I do a fake Mark for 99 cents as well? So you can have the cheap, fake voices for. A good price or you pay the full 6.99 if you want my book.
Um, but here’s, here’s something that fascinates me, cause I’m sure you’ve thought of this as well because of fiction writing is I’m thinking, Okay, using my fake voice, how could someone really get me in trouble? Right by, by having a recording of me saying something that’s completely not my character or incriminates me about something, right? Like it could be a personal matter where, you know, I leave a message. It’s my voice, leaving a message on Liz’s cell phone and saying, Hey, I just slept with a hooker or whatever the thing is, or I’m leaving you or whatever, though, likely to really mess up someone’s life.
Joanna Penn: Yeah. Or someone leaves my voice on your phone saying thanks for last night, Mark.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Both Jonathan and Liz get a hold of this and go, wait, what the heck? Wait, what?
Joanna Penn: And we’re like, yeah, we live on the opposite sides of the ocean.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah. Fortunately we’re now all separated.
Joanna Penn: This is what I mean by the deep fake and the need to be aware.
Of it. Um, because obviously this has happened in the, you know, in the porn community that lots of actresses, and I’m sure actors have also been, you know, put in these situations where they weren’t doing those things. And they’ve been faked on video and we’ve seen the fake videos and now we, you know, we can do these fake voices, but it’s not just famous people anymore.
It’s people like us. So. We want people to be aware. I think that’s the thing with AI. Isn’t it? It’s this double edged sword of like the internet. It can be amazing or it can be terrible and we need to be aware of both.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah. For, for sure. So again, I think we’re both cautiously optimistic.
Joanna Penn: Yes. And, and what it comes down to you as, you know, the AI voice said, is that a trusted brand, hopefully you and I have a clear enough brand amongst our, the people who know us online, that if I heard a recording of you saying something that I thought that’s not Mark, that’s not, as in, that’s not what Mark would say.
Right. Rather that’s Mark’s voice, but that’s not what you would say. Then. I hope that as a friend, I would contact you and say, Hey, just to let you just checking a bit, like, people email me all the time and say, Oh, Hey, I’ve seen your book on one of these pirate sites. And I’m like, okay, great. And sometimes I do a take down sometimes like, just ignore it.
But in the same way, I hope that people would. Email us and say, Oh, Hey, I heard your voice on this. Um, adverts saying this particular software is the best thing ever, and I should buy it. Just checking.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Do you mean that, is that you or fake Facebook profiles? For example, where I have somebody reach out, who’s already a friend and go, um, I like to play with them and ask them something that’s wrong so that they respond in the positive.
And I know for sure it’s not them. Cause, um, but it’s that kind of thing.
Joanna Penn: Right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Then you check with your friend and say, Hey. Check your account, something might’ve been hacked because they’re using your picture and your likeness to pretend to be you, right. It’s just, it’s that courtesy we have with our friends and the people that we’ve known and trust.
Joanna Penn: Yes, exactly. So I think, again, the message for everyone listening is be aware of what’s happening and use these things as a, in a positive way. And also, as we’ve talked about. It’s some kind of licensing and copyright, and that’s how the blockchain speeds up a bit. And that, you know, that we get things in place that can at least protect this new wild West.
Cause it is, it’s like the wild West right now, and there’s not enough protection around this stuff. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, we live in interesting tires. Do we not here’s me.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Here’s what I’m thinking next level. Right? So the AI of the voice, but then the AI of the, of the voice of a writer, which I know you’ve talked about a lot on your podcast is, um, imagine that there’s enough of our voices as.
As personalities and the things we’ve said on our podcast and in public speaking. And then they use our fake voices and a fake generation of a, of a completely fake conversation between us. And to see if it would actually say the things we, we would say, it’s like, well, that kind of sounds like what Joanne would say.
And it sounds like Joanna, do you know what I mean? Like the double layer? Well, that’s basically what we’ve done.
Joanna Penn: We, we, we recorded ourselves chatting and then. We got the AI to say that. So the words do you resonate with all people? Yeah. With our brand,
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: but what I’m saying is imagine that the whole conversation was as if Mark and Joe talked about this.
They say like, just like it generates speech based on the JF Penn for fiction, right. In the style of that. That’s what I was wondering. That kind of thing.
Joanna Penn: I absolutely think that with GPT three, for example, which you know, has come out in recent weeks, that is definitely going to be possible, which is why this all certainly seems quite real and far more far more real than it has done, even for me.
And, you know, I’ve been thinking about this for years. Yeah. And I, I do think that the pandemic is accelerating these technologies and incredible rates, and that’s why we have to be aware. So I, anything else we want to say to people again, hold your hands up and kind of balance the good and the bad. Let’s try and meet the good, the bigger, bigger pot.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: That’s right, because with great power comes great responsibility. I can’t remember who said that, but …
Joanna Penn: Haven’t you got a t-shirt with that on it or something?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: I’m wearing a Spiderman t-shirt as we’re recording this
Joanna Penn: You love Spider-Man.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: I do.
Joanna Penn: Okay, Mark. Well, thank you so much for this. This has been fun.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre: It has been. Thank you, Jo.
So it was interesting to hear your AI voices in conversation. I feel that the uncanny valley for voices is there but can be lulled away since we don’t process as much with our ears as we do our eyes. Uncanny valley is the disconnect we see when we are watching 3d humans on computer screens. We know something is off even if we can’t put our finger on it.
By the end I was understanding more and more and it was sounding like you two until Joanna say Hey and it was obvious it wasn’t you.
I feel that it will be longer than 6-12 months, Joanna might be on with her 18 months. But then again we shall see. Every technology that is life changing is always 5-10 years out so who knows.