With demand for spoken-word audio on the up, 80% of media leaders are investing more in digital audio this year. If you're making the move into spoken-word audio, one of the main things you'll need to consider is human vs AI audio. While publishers like Zetland, The Economist, and Harvard Business Review have seen success with human voice over, publishers including Berlingske, The Japan Times, and Media24 are engaging audiences with synthetic speech. Some, like The Washington Post, use a mixture of both. Human voices can be more engaging, but this comes at a huge cost — one that's often unviable. With the quality of synthetic speech catching up to, and in some ways surpassing, human voice over, many find that the balance has tipped into AI's favor. Especially when it comes to audio articles and newsletters. In this article, I'm going to compare human vs text-to-speech audio production in terms of quality, cost, and time, to help you make an informed decision. Quality Human-read audio is generally considered more personable and engaging than AI audio, because people can add more emphasis and emotion into their speech. They can also manually check pronunciations and make thoughtful decisions on delivery. However, if you haven't had training in narration or voice acting, delivering clear and engaging speech yourself can be difficult. The sound can also be compromised by your recording environment and equipment. Hiring a voice actor and professional recording studio will give the highest-quality results, but this can be time-consuming and expensive. You may also have issues with achieving a consistent brand voice, because you will be relying on the availability of the voice actor. Another drawback with human-read audio is a lack of flexibility. Switching between multiple languages or voices means hiring and managing multiple speakers. This compromises your ability to choose the best voice for each piece of content you're producing. It's also impractical to edit human red audio after publishing. AI audio offers more consistency and reliability, as well as flexibility. With BeyondWords, you can easily update what's being said and switch between more than 500 voices across 130 plus language locales. There's even the option to create custom voices. This means you can clone your own voice, or the voice of a person on your team, to give audio a more personal touch. Or, you can work with a voice actor to create a unique and engaging brand voice. While AI audio is not as personable and emotive as human speech, progress is being made. And in certain cases, it's hard to tell the difference. The quality of your text-to-speech audio will depend largely on the AI voice itself. As well as having the option to create a custom voice, our users get access to an AI voice library featuring voices from Amazon Polly, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Subscribers can also use premium voices like Joe, which are ethically created in collaboration with voice actors. But the voice isn't the only thing that matters. AI voices sound better on BeyondWords because we use natural language processing algorithms to convert your text into speech synthesis markup language. This reduces the risk of pronunciation errors and allows for custom text-to-speech rules. Cost Human-read audio is traditionally expensive to produce. Of course, the cost will vary significantly depending on scale, how much work you do yourself, and how much you want to invest in quality. Technically, you can use your own voice, your phone or computer, and free software to create audio for nothing. You'll just need to account for your time and perhaps pick up some new skills. However, podcast producer Jeff Large explains that individual podcasters can spend over $2,000 on equipment, $799 on software, and $99 on hosting alone. Businesses that want to hire a podcast production team are looking at $1,000 to $15,000 per episode. To give some further context, if you are hiring a voice actor to rea...