Today on The Rough Draft, we're joined by Al Black, the COO of Voquent, a company that specializes in talent matching services for global content creators and businesses seeking expert localization solutions. With over 25 years of experience in expanding global reach for brands and creators, Al shares valuable insights into the significance of accessibility in content, offering strategies for effective online localization. We delve into the evolving landscape of AI's impact on creative industries, exploring both its opportunities and challenges. Al underscores the importance of adapting to technological advancements while also emphasizing the need to protect artists' rights in this rapidly changing landscape. 

Further, Voquent has been kind enough to offer Rev customers 10% off their first order of voiceover or dubbing services. Simply mention “Rev” when making an inquiry.

Guest Bio

Al Black, co-founder and COO of Voquent, boasts a 25-year career helping creators reach new global audiences through translations, voiceovers, and dubbing.

Additional Resources

• voquent.com
• LinkedIn: Al Black
• Voquent YouTube: @Voquent
• X: voquent
• European Accessibility Act

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- [Al] Well, I think

that's a great question

that more companies should

be asking themselves

because it's amazing how many big brands

don't put enough focus on this

- [Colton] Without doing that,

creators are missing out on, you know,

massive amounts of audiences, right?

- [Al] And I was like, wow,

I've actually been

experiencing this all my life

and I had no idea that this was a thing.

So obviously on the radio and TV.

- [Colton] Not much.

- [Al] Well, that's the

scary thing though, isn't it?

- [Colton] It may feel

like a victimless crime,

but in the end, it's robbing someone

of a lot of different things.

I'm Colton Holmes,

and today I'm your host

on "The Rough Draft."

In this episode I sit down with Al Black,

co-founder and COO of Voquent.

Al has 25 years of experience

helping businesses expand their reach

through voiceovers, video

translations, and dubbing.

And his company Voquent specializes

in matching expert voice actors,

translators, and engineers with clients.

We spent some time

discussing the importance

and the value of accessibility,

as well as the strategies

and the advantages of

localizing online content.

We talk about AI's rapid advancement

into the creative industries

and the importance of

protecting artists' rights.

All right, here's my

conversation with Al Black.

(upbeat music)

All right, so online

content is king nowadays,

and there's some staggering

statistics out there

about how much content is consumed daily,

how much content is created daily,

but a lot of that content

doesn't meet accessibility standards

and is not localized for other languages.

And I know that you

have a lot of experience

in both of those fields and so, or areas.

And so I'd love for you to just speak into

why is accessibility important,

and why is localization

important with online content?

- [Al] Well, I think

that's a great question

that more companies should

be asking themselves

because it's amazing how many big brands

don't put enough focus on this.

And we've actually been

helping a lot of people

over the last year or so

with trying to migrate their

accessibility processes

and try and treat it more seriously

because it's a fact that a huge portion

of the world have visual impairments.

They have, they're deaf or

they're hard of hearing.

I've got some World Health

Organization statistics here.

So like 5% of the world's

population has hearing loss.

About 28% of the world's population

has some kind of visual impairment.

And so if you're not making

your content accessible to them,

you're immediately, you know,

saying that they're not important,

they're not worth speaking to.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] And now the

European Accessibility Act

is coming into play.

And so by June, 2025,

if you've got any kind of web presence,

digital presence in Europe,

you're talking to European customers,

you're gonna have to take it seriously

because that act is gonna make sure

that any digital products and services

are accessible to these audiences.

And for that reason, we're

seeing a big, big increase

in things like audio description projects,

you know, captioning, that's

just growing all the time.

And of course for the, I would say

for the travel-y accessibility,

people are looking for sign

language solutions as well.

And it's a really interesting time

to be in the field and

see how that's evolving

and also how the video

platforms are evolving

to make accessibility

easier for everybody.

- [Colton] Yeah, what are some ways

that you've seen, you know,

that evolution take place

of platforms enabling

accessibility options?

- [Al] Well, some of the

top video player apps,

so there's hundreds of these

in the corporate world.

We kinda get visibility of them

because we'll have to

meet certain guidelines

when we're delivering projects.

And it's amazing how

many have now got things

like audio description built into them.

So you could have like two different

audio tracks put on there.

One for the audio

description, one for without.

So somebody can literally just click AD

and it'll have the audio described

version read out to them.

Another way that we are pushing hard

is multi-language audio.

So on YouTube you can

now choose audio tracks.

You just go to settings and

you can change your audio track

to different languages if

the channel supports that.

And so we've been trying

to make a lot of noise

about that to push brands

to take that seriously

and start speaking to

their global customer base,

not just the customers

in the US or in the UK.

And it's, I think we're still

at the very start of that.

So YouTube's like the first

major social media platform

to add that, but you're

gonna see Meta, Facebook,

and all the other platforms

follow suit, I'm sure,

and in the very near future,

that they'll be adding those

features in themselves.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] At the end of the day,

it's all gonna come back down to money.

And if you can localize your content

and translate it to a global audience,

you're gonna create more ad revenue so.

- [Colton] I wanna take a step

into the localization part

of this conversation, which is, you know,

creating, translating your

content for other languages

and without doing that,

creators are missing out on,

you know, massive amounts

of audiences, right?

Talk to me a little bit

about the importance

of localizing your content.

- [Al] Yeah, I mean, 1.5 billion people

out of, what, 8 billion

people on Earth speak English.

So it's a lot.

And that's primary language

speakers and second speakers.

And so if your content is

not in English already,

it probably should be.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] So if it's,

if you're a German company

or a French company or a Japanese company

and you want to reach a global audience,

it's an absolute no brainer

to put your content into English first

'cause you're gonna reach way more people

than any other language.

But if you're an English speaking company,

so if you're based in the

US, UK, Australia, wherever,

and you're not translating your content,

you are basically ignoring

that vast rest of the audience,

which is what, six and

a half billion people.

And it's pretty interesting

when you look at YouTube,

for example, there's,

everybody sees YouTube

and thinks it's a

predominantly English platform,

but actually there's more

Hindi speakers on YouTube

than there is English speakers

for the most part.

- [Colton] Really?

- [Al] Yeah, and so if you've got,

if you want to just get

more views of your content,

translate it into Hindi

and you're gonna get way more views on it.

That's something that Mr. Beast

has proven.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] With his YouTube strategy,

but also languages like Spanish are good.

And obviously Portuguese,

those are gonna reach

a much bigger audience.

But if you're focused on

just generating revenue,

if you've got products and

services you want to sell,

you need to think about the income level

of the people you're targeting as well.

- [Colton] Yeah, that's interesting.

- [Al] So, you know,

if you've got an expensive

product, you know,

and you're targeting people in India,

then your chances of selling it

are gonna be a lot less than

if you're targeting people

in Germany where there's a lot more income

and the higher GDP.

And so when we are advising our customers,

we're also looking at, okay,

so what markets are you

gonna find more success?

And that's, that seems to be something

that generates a lot of value for them

because they don't have

to sort of guess anymore.

They're just looking at the facts.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] You know?

Okay, let's, I mean, it

can be sounding obvious.

Okay, Germany's got a lot

the fourth largest economy

in the world, so it's an

obvious one to go for.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] But you've also

got to look at the niche

that you're in and

marry that with the type

of audiences you're going after.

Like gaming audiences are

quite different to people

that are interested in financial content,

for example.

- [Colton] Sure, yeah.

Generally speaking without, you know,

focusing on a specific product or niche

or consumer base, what

would the top five languages

be for that purpose?

- [Al] Yeah, I mean, if

you're just looking to like,

get maximum views on YouTube,

the most obvious languages

are definitely English,

Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Hindi.

If you're looking to

really, really focus on,

you know, countries where you

can maximize your revenues,

then English is still right up there.

But the language order changes.

So now you've got maybe Japanese, Korean,

Germany, or German,

sorry, Italian, French.

And then you've still got Portuguese,

Spanish, Arabic, and

Hindi all in the top 10.

And for us, it's amazing how many people

think that Japanese is quite

a small, niche language

and they don't even consider

that it's actually one of the

top ones to focus on as well.

So there's also a lot of YouTube users

that speak Japanese on

the platform as well.

Compared to other languages.

So proportionately, it's

actually a really good one.

Japanese and Korean along with German,

although there's a lot of German people

who speak English pretty well as well.

So what you'll find is some

of the top German channels

that we've looked at,

they've got their content

in English and German.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] So that they're doing both.

- [Colton] Yeah, it's an

interesting point of view

that I've never considered

is looking at how,

not just how do I generate views,

but how do I generate revenue

based on what languages I'm

localizing my content for?

It's just, this is the first time

I've ever thought of that.

And so it's just an

interesting take on it.

- [Al] Yeah, our CEO, Miles,

he spent a couple of months actually

doing a lot of this research himself.

He was researching the data

and, okay, so where the video ad spend,

what countries is, are

people spending the most in?

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] On video.

And I mean, it is kinda

makes sense, doesn't it?

At the end of the day, you

need to follow the money

and where the advertisers

are is where the money is so.

- [Colton] You mentioned Mr. Beast

and his localizing of his content.

And you mentioned an

interesting case study

that you have of him,

of how he did localize

and how he had separate

channels for each language,

but then, you know, pivoted.

Can you tell me a little bit

about what he did and why?

- [Al] He's followed the path

of creating separate channels

for the top languages.

And then what he's done is when YouTube's

obviously started talking to him

about the multi-language

audio feature that,

which they were rolling out into to beta,

he's seen that and thought,

well, this is the future.

And so he's dove head first into that.

And now if you go to any of

his, like previous channels,

like his Spanish channels,

the content when you click

on it will redirect back

to his actual main English channel.

But with that audio track selected,

so you'll hear it in the Spanish

or the Portuguese version of it.

And we've tested this

'cause we've got people in the office

who are not native English,

like they're Portuguese

or they're French or whatever.

And they've actually tried this out

on their own, their own YouTube account.

So yeah, it's really interesting

and I think YouTube's gonna be

pushing this hard this year.

So 2024 is when they

said this would roll out

to everybody and it still hasn't.

So I think we'll have

to wait and see on that.

But it's definitely rolling its way out

to the big, the bigger accounts anyway.

- [Colton] Would you mind

just going into detail

of what the multilanguage

audio is on YouTube

and how, like, how that

works or what it looks like?

- [Al] YouTube has had

subtitles, captions,

for, since the start, really.

You can go in there and you can select

to watch, have the captions on.

I have captions on all the

time when I'm watching content,

but you can change the language on that

if they've translated the content

or you can use Google's auto

machine translation engine

to do that for you.

So essentially it's

turning the audio content

into translated text format

for you to read along with the video,

which is really great if you're,

if you do struggle with your hearing

or if you just want to watch it

in a noisy environment or something.

So yeah, that's quite often

why I've got the captions on.

And then obviously the

next evolution of that

is to turn the translation

into an audio format.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] And so multi-language

audio allows the user

to basically select which language

they want to hear the audio in,

and you'll then hear the

dubbed version of, you know,

Mr. Beast in Spanish or whatever

it is that you're watching.

And it's actually really,

really impressive.

So we just, we've just been working

with the official Minecraft channel

on some content recently.

And if you go to their most recent posts,

you can go and try it yourself.

You can watch one of their videos,

and then you can on the fly switch

between the different languages

and it's really satisfying to actually

just see that and to do it.

- [Colton] Yeah.

It'll be interesting to see

how that all rolls out and plays out.

I actually wanna touch on the fact

that you actually have

a creative background

coming up in sound engineering,

working in post-production studios.

And now actually you have

a hand in writing scripts

for your marketing material at Voquent

and actually even directing some videos,

video content for Voquent as well,

which I've seen and is awesome by the way.

Well done.

- [Al] Thank you.

- [Colton] So you are a creative yourself

now getting to work in

a role that gets to work

with creatives all over the world.

- [Al] Yeah, so I was a huge music nerd

when I was a teenager, absolute.

That, and gaming were where I was like,

spent most of my time.

And so I played the guitar

and sung in various bands and things.

And so that's why I

trained as a sound engineer

and got involved in the

industry back in the nineties.

And I didn't sort of work

very long as a sound engineer.

I transitioned into the business side

of things very quickly because

I just really enjoyed sales.

I was doing some sales jobs part-time

and just really gravitated towards that.

And then a job came up,

which kind of combined both

of those things together.

And so I started to learn about

this thing called voiceover,

which I'd never heard of before.

And I was like, wow,

I've actually been

experiencing this all my life

and I had no idea that this was a thing.

It's obviously on the

radio and tv, everything.

This is a voiceover, of course.

But I didn't think this was an industry.

- [Colton] Right.

- [Al] And so when

I found out about how big it was,

I was, became really,

really passionate about it.

And so I think the whole

creative industry is something

that I just absolutely love.

And I love the fact that we are able

to help a lot of creatives

and creative teams

to see their projects come to life,

'cause at the end of the day,

so much work goes into

creating video content,

but it's the voice or it's the presenter

or the actor that people

want to connect with.

That's ultimately what they,

the emotion that's in the scene.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] And if you don't have that,

it definitely misses something.

- [Colton] Yeah, I

mean, I've probably been

in the same space for most of my life.

Not, you know, I've

consumed voiceover content

in various broad or various ways

between radio and

advertisements and video games.

But obviously I think

I was always not aware

of how much work goes into that

and how it is a career

that someone pursues,

like there is voice acting

and how important it is

to find the right voice

actor for this project.

And those two things married together

takes the production level up a notch.

And so I'd love for you to

speak into that a little bit

and how, maybe how you guys

vet different voice actors

or what y'all's process is as you work

with voiceover artists.

- [Al] Voquent is currently

the biggest platform

of tested and engineer

approved voice actors.

So that means every time a

voice actor joins Voquent,

we actually check their profile,

make sure they look legitimate.

And as soon as they upload any audio,

one of our engineers is listening to it

and checking it's actually

meeting our standards

and is accurately described

before we make it live on our search.

And so quality is really,

really important to us.

And the reason we've created

our platform the way we did

is to enable customers to get zeroed in

on that voice in their head.

So that voice that they've been imagining

while they've been creating that script,

we want them to be able to

just go through a search

and find those unique accents,

find those tones that

they've been thinking about

and just get samples of audio immediately

that match that without

having to post a project,

without having to, you

know, wade through auditions

from voice actors that quite often

are not gonna meet their expectations.

So that has enabled us

to create a platform

where people can just get

zeroed in straight away

on what they're looking for

and then move to the next stage, which is,

yeah, we want 'em to audition the script

and we want them to hear them say it

in this way or that way.

And for the voice actors, it's great

because it means that they

can just sign up for free.

They don't have to pay any money,

they can just upload their audio,

and they can get immediately

presented with opportunities.

And so that's where we found our success.

And for us, it's always

been super important

that the voice actors

never have to pay a penny.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] So it's always free for them.

Every opportunity we present to them,

it's like if they don't want to do it,

that's totally fine with us.

So they've got the choice

whether they want to do the job or not.

And at the end of the day,

having that choice and

having the flexibility

just to get work from us or not,

we think is really the

ultimate for a creative

or artist that the whole

reason behind that, as I said,

is just so you can get

that voice in your head.

And that's really what it's all

about at the end of the day.

And so unique accents is something

I'm really passionate about

and it's been really interesting

just hearing those voices.

And we've actually, there's the one voice

in particular, Hua,

and she voices our "Ode to the Voices"

or "Here's to the Voices" it's called now,

"Here's to the Voices" video.

And she's got an incredible

voice and an incredible talent.

And she's getting very

well known in Nigeria.

It's her home country.

And I can see her going

on to great success.

I think she's extraordinary so.

- [Colton] Yeah, is she, who voiced,

did the voiceover for,

is that one of the videos

that you sent the link to?

- [Al] Yeah, the "Heres'

to the Voices" one.

- [Colton] Yeah, I love that one.

- [Al] Which is an animated, yeah.

She's got a tremendous voice.

- [Narrator] Raise the

glass to the voices,

the storytellers that persuade

and enchant in our dreams.

The monsters and aliens,

the witches and queens,

the ones that spin a world

when it's about to go quiet.

The favorite swashbuckling

friendly pirate.

The voice of the villain

that we love to hate,

the prophets that will

not decide our fate.

We hear you.

When you whisper the stories

and audio books and

you help the blind see,

describing how it looks

when you never give up

in our favorite cartoons.

And your words make a palace

filled with thousands of rooms.

Always remember when the mic goes off,

your presence lingers forever

in our minds and hearts.

Life created together.

So cheers to the voices

that may not know the

power that they hold.

Their connections to our emotions

that make us brave and bold.

Your talent is celebrated

no matter where you're from.

Captivate the world with voquent.com.

- [Al] She's got something very

evocative about her delivery

and it kinda makes you feel

like there's a lot more there.

There's that, you really get

that emotional connection with her voice.

And that's what everybody's looking

for in their productions, right?

I mean, you're creating a story

and it doesn't matter

whether it's a boring

or seemingly boring corporate video about,

you know, like it could be about

solar panel installations or whatever.

You still want to have that

human connection in there.

You need to get whoever's watching it

to be interested, to engage with that

and get something out

of it for themselves.

And the way to do that is by using actors

or voice actors to sort of

bring out that human element.

- [Colton] Did I read correctly

that she also helped

write the script for that?

- [Al] Yeah, I'd written a poem

called "Ode to the Voices"

and in a very early and

very badly made video,

we first did for Voquent in 2018

when we first launched the platform.

That's why I called it

"Ode to the Voices,"

'cause I was trying to say,

look, this is what makes the

platform is the voice actors.

It's not me or Miles or anybody else.

It's who's on the platform.

And so I wrote like a

poem, "Ode to the Voices."

And then Hua, she's a spoken word poet

as well as a voice actor.

And so I asked her if

she'd be able to take

what I'd written and make it her own.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] You know,

make it something that,

how she would say it.

And so she did an amazing job of that.

- [Colton] Yeah, it was really,

it was really well done.

And what a cool testament

to the collaboration

that you get to do with artists.

And one thing that has been evident

in the short time that I've

gotten to chat with you

between today and yesterday

is, man, your passion

for these voiceover artists,

it's just very evident

that you, you know, care deeply for them

and for their success.

Which makes me, which just

leads me into this thought of AI

and its infiltration of the creative space

for better or for worse.

I mean, I think there's a lot of misuse

happening with AI in various ways

beyond just the creative space.

But I wanna talk about how it is advancing

so quickly and as creatives

in the creative industry,

what are ways that we can

embrace it in the correct way

and utilize it in the correct way,

but also push for regulation

among AI and its use?

- [Al] Yeah, I think that the governments

are gonna just take too long

to actually do anything

real with regulation.

There is some signs,

and I know that some

people we collaborate with

about how to protect

their artists from AI.

And there's some people

that we collaborate with

in the US about that

and they've been going to Congress

and speaking to Congress

about what can be done.

But I think because the

technology's moving so quickly,

it's gonna be extremely difficult

to get anything in place fast enough.

And in fact, I think a lot of

these AI voiceover companies

specifically are gonna die before,

you know, before anything's done.

And the reason I say that is

because a lot of 'em are

taking on huge sums of cash

from VCs, speculating because the company

has obviously got some

kind of AI technology

and everybody's just hyped

up about AI right now.

And so they're taking that cash

and they're pumping out their product,

and I don't think a great deal of them

are finding success with

it because AI voiceovers

are not particularly great.

And the reason I say that

is not just not 'cause I'm anti-AI.

I actually think AI

technology is really exciting.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] I think there's

gonna be hugely exciting potential

for the creative industries

with the technology,

but I see it more as a productivity tool

than something to replace humans.

I think it's gonna accelerate

our ability to be creative,

but it's not gonna just take our jobs.

And so I think the biggest threat from AI

to voiceover and voice actors particularly

is voice cloning technology.

And so, I don't know if you've seen

some of the platforms out there,

I won't mention their names.

I think most people know

who the main platforms are.

If they want to do a Google,

they can find out for themselves.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] I don't really want to

give them any more air time,

but yeah, they've been using

some fairly unethical methods

to promote their voice cloning technology.

They've cloned celebrities who are dead

or entrepreneurs who have died,

like Steve Jobs, I've

seen a clone of his voice.

And then you've obviously got,

and we were talking about

this yesterday with the music,

you know, sites where it's,

where they've taken like Johnny Cash

and he's singing the Barbie.

- [Colton] Barbie Girl.

(Colton laughs)

- [Al] Barbie Girl song.

Yeah.

And that kind of thing.

And obviously, you know,

there's some real problems

with that ethically.

Like if I was Johnny

Cash's, you know, relative,

I don't think I'd be

particularly happy to see that.

I mean, and it's also a misappropriation

of their, you know, their voice

and their fame, if you like.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] And they're use,

they're leveraging that.

- [Colton] I mean even

voice to the second degree,

like a little bit deeper than

just their physical voice,

but also the voice that they,

their voice in the sense

of what they represented, I suppose.

- [Al] Yeah, exactly.

They're, you're taking that kinda brand,

like what they're known for,

and you're misappropriating

it and misusing it.

And I think that's really

something that voice actors

or actors in general, it's

not just voice actors,

but actors in general, are

really concerned about,

so it's not just about

voice cloning, obviously,

it's about digital cloning as well.

So the film studios

already clone the actors

and they use AI technology

to edit their content.

But if you can just take

somebody's digital self

and clone them and then never

book them for work again,

I mean, that's a massive problem.

- [Colton] Right.

- [Al] You've now,

you know, own your digital self

and you can then just use it

whenever you feel like it.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] As an actor, that's horrifying.

And it's the same

with whether you're a voice

actor or a traditional actor.

And I think that's why

the protests last year

lasted for so long because

they really wanted SAG-AFTRA

to stand up for them and

do something about this.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] And there were some

agreements put in place,

but I don't think they were sufficient

to really protect people.

And I think they gave

up a little bit too easy

to be honest, to the big studios.

But here we are.

I think artists are gonna have to,

and the representing agents

are gonna have to stand up

for them and really make

sure the contracts are,

when it particularly when it comes to AI,

are very stringent.

And they know exactly

what they're agreeing to.

And so we've updated all our terms

and conditions to make

sure that clients know

that they can never

take our voices, audio,

and go and use it for sharing,

training generative AI.

Or to, you know, clone their voice

if they want to make some edits

to their audiobook that they've recorded.

And this unfortunately is something

that we're finding is more

and more of a problem.

And that's why I think

there is a lot of fear

from actors in the industry

because a lot of clients are doing this

without really thinking

about the consequences of it.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] They're just

thinking about their project

and trying to get things done quickly,

and they're not realizing

how much an infringement

it is on the artist

to just misappropriate

their digital selves

and do what they want with it.

- [Colton] Yeah.

- [Al] And it's particularly concerning

when it's now becoming

so easy to clone people.

Like I was reading the other day,

I won't name the company,

but they can clone your

voice within 10 seconds

with just 10 seconds of audio.

- [Colton] That's crazy.

- [Al] And so you can

think of the ramifications

of that if you could just, you know,

have some 10 seconds of your like podcast,

let's take Colton's voice

and then just stick it onto the platform.

Now I've got Colton's voice.

What can I do with this?

Well, you know, let's go and see what,

see what money we can get

out of his family, you know?

- [Colton] Not much but.

(Al laughs)

- [Al] Well, that's the

scary thing though, isn't it?

It's like, it's right there now

for any of these really unethical,

you know, criminals to take advantage of

and that's why we need regulation.

But I just don't think

it's coming fast enough.

- [Colton] Yeah.

It may feel like a victimless crime,

but in the end, it's robbing someone

of a lot of different

things, but, you know.

One of the top ones being their work.

- [Colton] Yeah, and I think

anybody in the creative space

is definitely gonna respect that.

You know, they're gonna realize that.

And one of the things

that we have to educate

our customers a lot on

when it comes to voiceover

is when it comes to

commercials, for example,

you'd often see contracts sent over to us,

which said that they wanted

to pay for the session fee

and then they also wanted usage rights

in perpetuity worldwide.

And what that basically

means is that they could take

that piece of audio content

and broadcast it on

any platform they want,

anytime they want forever.

And the artist is not gonna be compensated

anymore for the work.

And so we always push back on that

and we get 'em to put a timeline in there.

How much time do you

actually need this for?

And be realistic about which regions

you're gonna be promoting us in.

And it's amazing how many customers

just don't want to think about that.

They just want to go, you know,

it doesn't, I don't know, I don't care.

I just want the right,

so I don't have to think about it.

And the same thing's happening

with the AI technology.

And that's why I think, you know,

people just want things too easy almost.

They're just like trying to

make things easy for themselves,

not thinking about their actual audience

and the creative people

behind the projects.

- [Colton] Yeah, well,

Al it's been a pleasure

getting to chat with you.

And I love to see how much you

and Voquent are doing on

the accessibility front,

but also on caring for these

artists in the VO community

just between regulations and contracts

and making sure that they are protected

and their work is

protected in the AI space.

And so I've loved getting

to chat with you today.

For those who are listening,

can you share how they can

connect with you online

and on socials or with Voquent online?

- [Al] Yeah, we, if they

wanna connect with me at,

probably the best place is LinkedIn.

That's generally my only social.

It's all business for me, you know,

so I'm on LinkedIn and they

can just find me, Al Black.

If they wanna connect with Voquent,

the best places are

probably YouTube or Twitter.

Those are the two biggest

growing audiences we've got.

- [Colton] Great, and I'll link those

in the show notes for everyone else too.

Al thanks again.

It was a pleasure.

I appreciate it.

- [Al] Yeah, it's been a real pleasure.

Thanks a lot, Colton.

(upbeat music)

- [Colton] Well that's

it for today's episode

of "The Rough Draft."

To learn more about our

guests and to find links

and resources related to the conversation,

check out rev.com/podcast.

That's rev.com/podcast.

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be sure to rate and subscribe

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help other creatives find us.

Thank you for listening,

and we look forward to seeing you again

on the next episode of "The Rough Draft."

(upbeat music)