On September 17, I was at a conference in Vienna to facilitate a Town hall session. Normally I then prepare 3 discussion topics myself that two speakers debate about. With some humor and a lot of interaction, this is how we end the two days. This time I used the help of Generative AI.
For this GenAI action, I used ChatGPT which is now available "for free" on my Apple MacBook and ElevenLabs - to which I have a paid subscription - for voiceover. I have a fair amount of experience with both tools and I apply them very pragmatically when I see the value. Also for this Town hall.
Help find topics for discussion
First, I asked ChatGPT to look at the program of DLF 2024 in Vienna and give me five discussion topics that summarise the congress and are interesting enough to debate. Promptly I received five “statements” with a brief explanation of why these arguments are interesting. The speed and quality did not disappoint me.
From that list, I chose three statements:
AI will save leadership
Transparent communications is essential
Storytelling is the future of communications
With always brilliant Felicity Sibindi as a flesh-and-blood debater, I felt confident that this could get very interesting.
Give arguments for and against
Then I asked ChatGPT to generate both arguments for and against each proposition. This first produced particularly boring arguments, but that was my own fault because I had not asked ChatGPT to liven it up with humor and make the style a bit more informative.
The second prompt produced a result that was far too playful and personal. But the third prompt was good enough.
See here the argument against the proposition that AI will save leadership. Not bad, right?
Speak your argument
The final phase of my GenAI experiment was to create a voice-over. I didn't think it would be very interesting to read out ChatGPT's arguments myself. Instead, I used ElevenLabs to create the voiceovers.
This is quite simple: copy the text from ChatGPT into ElevenLabs “text to voice” and choose a voice. I used three different voices to let the audience hear what a difference a voice - and especially intonation - can make.
Listen to the result:
The first voice has a German accent and is quite monotonous. The second and third voices are better, but with English texts, these are often voices with an American intonation. Hopefully the range will improve in the future.
Hear a mistake in intonation and pronunciation here and there? You can fix that by adjusting the text a bit, But it was good enough for the Town hall.
ChatGPT's value: average
All in all, ChatGPT took a lot of work off my hands. The discussion points were good, as were the arguments for and against. I did have to drive the result somewhat with custom prompts, but I actually like that. You can clearly see a difference in results when you give some nuanced instructions.
I do think I would have come up with better discussion points if I had had to do this myself. The arguments for and against are well found by ChatGPT. I use ChatGPT mainly to see if I am missing something and how to word something in a different way. But the tool is not yet good enough to adopt something verbatim.
After Felicity and Chatipity's arguments, the audience could respond and then the debaters could respond to that. That is always the most valuable part because then you notice how passionate people can be about a topic. ChatGPT doesn't play any role in that. There is no “live” AI debater as far as I know. I don't think such a robot debater adds much either, but I would like to experiment with it.
The value of ElevenLabs: high
ElevenLabs is an excellent tool for creating voiceovers. I have had a fair amount of experience hiring “voice actors” and also recording and editing them myself. That is quite expensive, time-consuming and laborious. But ElevenLabs makes the whole process very easy for a minimal amount of money. I now use it for all my videos and animations.
With some adjustments to the text for better intonation and the right choice of voice, ElevenLabs is very useful. Especially if a text is modified in between, the tool proves its value. No need to do a new audio recording, just paste the new text into the tool and download the new audio.
At the end of the discussion, the organizer Volker Grünauer did not want to believe that I had put this all together with GenAI tools. I don't know whether to take this as a compliment or an insult. Maybe I should ask ChatGPT ...
The next Town hall
The next Townhall is on November 6 in Olten, Switzerland. I don't know yet if I will use GenAI tools again. The audience was enthusiastic, but I missed the interaction and the “verbal battle” between two debaters. I would say: come to Olten and join the fun at the Townhall. And the entire conference that day, of course.
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