I’ve been doing professional eLearning voiceover work for years. I was the voice of an entire product line’s customer-facing training content. Hundreds of slides, dozens of courses, all recorded in my home studio using Hindenburg Pro.
So when a VO professional challenged me this weekend about using ElevenLabs AI voices, I got it. I’m on their side. But I also have a giant “but” – and it’s rooted in the economics and workflows of corporate eLearning that nobody wants to talk about.
What Changed (And It Wasn’t the Technology)
I still do voiceover work. In fact, I do better voiceover work now. The difference? My time is now reserved for high-value content: HR training, audit-related courses, compliance content – things with longer shelf lives and larger organizational impact.
The routine product training that changes quarterly? The quick-turnaround customer education modules? The content that gets revised six times before launch? That’s where AI voices entered the picture.
Not because AI replaced me. Because someone finally did the math on my time.
The Economics Nobody Talks About
Here’s the reality of most corporate eLearning budgets:
What I’d love to have: $50,000/year for professional voiceover work across all content.
What I actually get: $1,500.
When you’re working with that kind of budget, and your content changes twice a year minimum (plus add-ins, plus revisions, plus the inevitable “can we just tweak this one slide?” requests), the traditional VO workflow becomes impossible.
It’s not that human voiceover isn’t worth it. It’s that the content update cycle and the budget reality don’t align. You end up with a choice: outdated narration or no narration at all.
What AI Voices Actually Enable
With AI voices handling the high-churn content, we can actually:
- Create more engaging content within constraints – Narrated courses consistently outperform silent slides for adult learners, but most budgets can’t support full VO. AI makes engaging, narrated content financially viable.
- Keep content current instead of letting narration go stale because updates are too expensive
- Deliver faster turnarounds for customers who need training materials quickly
- Iterate more freely during development without revision fees for one slide change
This isn’t about replacing voice talent. It’s about making narrated eLearning financially viable for content that needs constant maintenance.
When Human VO Always Wins
AI voices are a tool, not a replacement for actual voice acting. Here’s when I still reach for the microphone:
- High-stakes content – HR policies, audit training, anything with serious compliance implications
- Long shelf life – Content that won’t need updates for 2+ years deserves the investment in human performance
- Brand-critical material – First impressions, flagship courses, anything customer-facing that represents the company
- Emotional nuance – When you need empathy, warmth, or genuine human connection
For these projects, the extra time and budget are absolutely worth it. The personality, inflection, and authenticity of a human voice matter.
The Tool I Built for the Middle Ground
Working in both worlds – professional VO and AI voice implementation – I kept hitting the same workflow problem: getting AI-narrated PowerPoint decks produced was still too manual and time-consuming.
That’s why I built Voxsmith. It automates the tedious process of converting PowerPoint speaker notes into narrated presentations using ElevenLabs voices. What used to take hours of exporting, converting, and syncing now happens in minutes.
It’s designed specifically for L&D professionals who need to produce narrated content quickly, iterate frequently, and stay within realistic budgets.
The Bottom Line
I’m not anti-voice talent. I am voice talent. But I’m also a pragmatist working in corporate learning environments where budgets are real and content changes constantly.
AI voices let us say “yes” to narration on projects that would otherwise go silent. They free up budget and time for human VO where it actually matters. And they let me focus my own voiceover work on content where my experience and craft make a real difference.
That’s not disruption. That’s just using the right tool for the job.
Don Burnside is a senior learning specialist at Axway and creator of Voxsmith, a PowerPoint narration automation tool for eLearning developers.