00:18:12 · Dan Price, Ezekiel Iferia
Our users need to sign a master agreement and also a per job agreement, limiting them from using it for unethical purposes or in unethical ways, or using it in ways that they did not indicate that they would be using it. So we're doing everything we can to try and bring comfort and confidence to actors once they commit [00:18:36] S0: to Oh, okay. Okay, Dan. There's a lot of fear that AI will replace human voice actors. So what's your take on this? Is is AI going to make voice actors obsolete, or, you know, is there a different future?
00:18:56 · Dan Price
[00:18:56] S1: I'd love to say, Well, no, no way, but there's a decent chance that those in that position will try to make that happen. It's funny, not long ago, I had a conversation with this group at SAG-AFTRA who was very into this platform. They liked how we were approaching everything. And they asked me a question that they said, you know, since the strike of the year 2000, 80% of all voiceover work is being done by non union voices. She said to me, How long do you think it'll take until 80% of all that work will start being handled by AI voices? Just knowing what I know about where the technology's come in the last few years, and the work I see being done out there, I said to her, I could see like three or four years that occurring. She said, We here at SAG-AFTRA believe it will take eighteen months for that to happen. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but they believe it to be true. And so that means there's a lot of urgency out there on the part of actors when they learn about this platform we've put together. We take a lot of emails and calls and inquiries about getting on board because they, like us, want to get out ahead of this. As one of my first actors that I spoke to about this idea said in the very beginning, The train is coming. I can either get out of the way, get run over, or get on board with it, because there's nothing we can do about it. So my whole position is, well, let's do things better than are being done now. Let's become the accepted way of doing things so that as AI gets better and better, maybe people will be less inclined to make that jump because we're already doing things the way they should be. In a weird way, we're actually the ones using AI for the benefit of human beings because this is all work they never would have been considered for in the first place. It's work we're defending against going to AI and to recapture work that's already going there, and we're using AI to do it, but it's with these great actors' voices. And so, you know, we're we're we're trying to do our part to not let that happen.
00:21:27 · Ezekiel Iferia
[00:21:27] S0: Alright. So, Dan, you know, I'd like to, you know, dwell more on the relationship between real voice actors, you know, and technology you are, you know, building. So, like, how do you work with real voice actors on BionicVO? You know, what's like the relationship between the human talent and the technology?
00:21:50 · Dan Price
[00:21:50] S1: So they're very involved in the beginning of this. I don't know how other platforms do it if they just sort of take audio, scrape it, and use it for their own purpose. Ours is not like that at all. We work with the actor through that whole process, that seven hour process, and it's not a continuous thing. It's like today, probably this morning, six or seven actors alone reacted to audio we sent them overnight, And they'll either say, Boy, that's awfully close, or Man, you nailed it, or I'm not so sure. Can you try this or that? So we work with them through that whole process so that they're happy because what I want is for them to be super enthusiastic about this platform so they elevate it, so they talk about it, they get out there on social media and push it. In fact, that's one of the reasons I've promised all of them, and we'll continue to make this promise, that we are not going to be all about having a ton of voices on there. Our claim is that we have the very best voices in the business on there. And because we claim that, that means there aren't going to be 4,000 voices, because there aren't 4,000 people great at this. Are there 90? Are there 140? Are there two sixty? I'm not sure of the number. I tend to think it's somewhere in those numbers that I mentioned, but that's for two reasons. One is we want these members to get all the work. I don't want them to be lost in the shuffle because person number 1,900 was listened to before they were. I want them to get the work so that they're motivated by that. But also, I want to just make it flat out very difficult to compete with this platform. If we have the best voices, no one else is going to be able to say that they do. We're also installed, which is sort of not exactly what you asked about, but we installed and integrated our own workstation, which took many months to put in there, but we don't want people to feel as though they ever need to leave. You know, that they have all the tools they need in there to do all the mixing, all the editing, just as if it's not a Pro Tools setup, but it's way better than the other platforms out there. So, you know, we're trying to do things in a way to make it later difficult to compete with, but as I say, that has a lot to do with these actors because I really value that they make up the whole thing. As I said, it's a two part thing.
00:24:37 · Dan Price, Ezekiel Iferia
We can do our part helping with the performance, but we need these great vocal cords on our platform, these people that just have these wonderful voices, and, you know, and then that's how the partnership has worked. [00:24:52] S0: Alright. That that was a really detailed response. I love how you went into the depths to give a really clear explanation of it. So you are, you know, you you are you are you are not really a technologist who discovered boys. No. You are a creative who spent 35 mastering the craft of audio storytelling done. So what was it like, you know, to build a tech company from that perspective? You know, what did you have to learn that you never expected?
00:25:28 · Dan Price
[00:25:28] S1: It's so funny I laugh because I end up saying that every two days I'll tell somebody, I had no idea what I was getting into when I came up with this. I thought in the beginning, Hey, I know the voices. I know the ones that should be made available. I know what good sounds like. Let's jointly try and figure out how to get there. And that's all I really knew. Little did I know that ultimately I was going to learn how investments work, because people started throwing money at it, where I had to actually file with the SEC all these transactions that were coming as a result of people wanting to invest in it. We had to set up a whole support system, a Zendesk sort of help center, and not just identify people who were great at that because we wanted that to be every good as the front end is. We had to work with a company to integrate that into the platform so that it's a pleasant experience for a user to get help. We had to train the AI within the Zendesk for non human things where we must have had, oh my God, you know, just scores and scores of answers to questions and train the AI on how to answer things. All that kind of stuff, not to mention the developing of a platform itself. I had no idea what I was doing, but like the other platforms that basically were tech guys that came at it, they were genius, younger tech guys, they knew very little about my business, so I vowed not to make the same mistake. I brought my business sort of sensibility to it and a lot of people surrounding me, but I went out and sought out the very best developers I could. We started out with a team in Pakistan, took it to a certain level. Then I brought it to The US. We have a four person team that's working night and day full time on various components of it. And I just wanted to move it closer to home because once we launched, I want to have quite a bit of control and instant remedying of various things that may occur. So I hired a full time person who has quite a bit of experience in a lot of these areas. So I basically just surrounded myself with the parts that I knew the least about and wanted to find the very best people to do that and surround myself. So I'm really happy with the team we've built. There have to be... Without counting actors, which are at the moment, there are 50 on the platform, another couple dozen waiting to get put on.