The Rise of ChatGPT - How AI is changing the voice industry. With social media manager Karen Michaels

Social media expert Karen Michaels joins us for a fascinating discussion on the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the world of singing, voice education and singing teacher marketing.

Karen shares her wealth of knowledge on harnessing the power of apps and AI in your socials. We’re chatting about the importance of authenticity in your online presence, avoiding burnout on social media and curating your feeds to create a positive and inspiring online environment for yourself.

Karen’s sharing her real-life experiences (including being our own social media manager) with tips on connecting with your audience and staying ahead of the curve.

Whether you’re a seasoned voice professional with a large following, or just getting started in the world of voice training, you need to watch this episode!

Don’t forget to like, subscribe and leave your comments below. What do you think of AI in the world of singing and singing teaching?

0:00 The 1st blooper from Jeremy 
2.12 Why AI for social media? 
5:04 What is AI? 
6:22 AI for social media? 
8:19 Is it cheating? How to use AI right 
12:09 How can we tell how good your teaching is? 
17:01 Planning and the chickens! 
20:52 Social media and burnout 
22:26 Curating your social media feeds 

Karen's podcast Your Creative GPS https://www.podpage.com/your-creative-gps/  

The Social Butterfly Group https://www.facebook.com/thesocialbutterflygroup/

We're on the NATSCast list! https://www.nats.org/NATSCast.html

Jeremy’s ChatGPT video on YouTube https://youtu.be/Yd0t9fP7JPU?si=7Sor_4-acgxlt2Bp
 

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a LOT more for the up-to-date singing teacher is here https://vocal-process-hub.teachable.com/p/12-hours-to-better-singing-teaching

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Transcript

The Rise of ChatGPT: How AI is Changing The Voice Industry

This IsA Voice S8 Ep2 with Karen Michaels

This is A Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.

Hello and welcome to This Is A Voice Season 8, Episode 2. 

The podcast where we get vocal about voice. 

I'm Jeremy Fisher. 

And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes. 

And we have with us One of our very special guests. We're so pleased to have this. This is Karen Michaels, she runs a podcast called Your Creative GP, and she runs a organization called the Social Butterfly Group, and she is very heavily involved in our marketing.

We're so thrilled to have you on the podcast. 

She is indeed, and a wonderful human, may I say. 

Absolutely. Hi, Karen. 

Hi, and wow, and thank you. That's so fun. It's actually Your Creative GPS, as in finding your way. 

What did I just say? 

You just said GP, which gross domestic product, maybe we're thinking 

or a doctor 

or a doctor.

Oh, I could be your doctor of social media. There we go. 

Okay. That'll be the bloopers for the end of the season. 

I don't know what planet I'm on today. Can I just, can we just go to what's happened just before we recorded, just before we started everything? 

Yes. So that everyone knows. 

Yeah, literally everything went wrong. So my laptop would not read two card readers plugged into two different USB keys, two USB ports.

I was going to record on Riverside, but Riverside is down and they are not able to fix it. So I spent half an hour trying to make that work. And then we had to change all the settings on Zoom. We've changed our microphones. It's been a barrel of laughs for the last hour. 

We reformatted the Oh, yes. drives and everything. 

So we did reformat the drives.

I've actually forgotten to switch the recording on. So it's going really well.

Hello and welcome to season eight episode two. 

Shall we do the biz and talk about this stuff? Karen, one of the reasons why we said we'd do this at this point is first of all, lots of people are getting their socials in order for the coming year. And I know. You have many tips on that, but also about the explosion of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT.

I nearly said GPS. So what am I like? So I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on that. And it's super important, I think, for people to get some kind of a handle on it. Even people of our generation. Absolutely. I speak of us, not about yourself. 

Old, old, old, old, old people. Hello Karen. Right. So where do you want to start? 

Oh my gosh. There's so many fun things to talk about. I, since you opened with talking about AI, let's just jump into there because I sort of feel like. It's five or six years ago, or maybe longer, when I was trying to convince everyone, exhaustingly so, about social media and how, futurism is one of my CliftonStrengths, and so it's very easy for me to see ahead, if you will, And so I knew what it was going to become and I knew how amazing and important it is for small business owners and performers.

And those of us who can't afford the million dollar commercial spot, hello, who can afford that? Those are, that's a large corporation thing. So I was thinking about that this morning that I. This time I'm going to be tougher because I think everyone is a little bit more advanced in their technology and the pandemic sort of rushed that all along.

And I don't think I have to convince people as much as I did before. But let's face it, AI is here and it's one of those things. Either you can choose to embrace it, or you, quite frankly, will be left behind. And that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have opinions about it, that doesn't mean that you have to use it in every way, in every aspect of your life.

It simply means that it is here, we should understand at least the basics of it, and even better, understand how we can utilize it in our businesses. in our independent voice studio businesses and even those who are academics, how we can use that purposefully and for the positive. Because one of my core values is that if the good people are quiet on the socials, then the bad people are loud.

And so we must be loud. We must get our messages and what we're teaching and sharing. We must get that out there. because then that will, that will take over from the, those other people. 

I love that. And that fits with the futurism as well, doesn't it? Which is that. I want to dive in. You first or me first? You first. So we know that AI stands for artificial intelligence. Let me sort of. play dumb a bit, which is, you know, there could be people listening out there who are our, you know, podcast devotees. Give us some different examples of what we mean when we say AI. 

Sure. So literally it really is. It's a trainable robot. That's what I think is the easiest way to think of that.

And so ChatGPT, which is still available for free with the caveat that it does not, that it's knowledge, it's trained knowledge does not go past 2021. If you have the upgraded feature and you pay for that, then there is more advanced training that you have access to. But I do want to make sure that everyone knows about that caveat of 2021.

So ChatGPT, you can basically ask it questions. You can ask it to perform tasks for you. And actually, Google Bard has that. Bing has one. And what you do is you simply inform the robot, this is what I would like to know, or this is what I would like to do, and then... It tells you that. That's the very simple version of that.

Now, the way people are really utilizing it best is that they're training it and they're giving it strong prompts. So by the way, that's a new sort of gig out there, prompt engineering. 

It's a new skill. 

is incredible. And what I learned, I signed up for it instantly back in November. I've been over using it now for just about a year.

And I learned that the more and specific information you give chat, the better it's going to come back with what you need it to do. And the funny thing is, again, I go back to anybody who is, who is having worries or concerns and fears. And again, not that you shouldn't, you should use your brain, but, voice teachers have always asked me, how can I just get my socials done?

How can I just have things done for me without, having a social media manager, perhaps that expense is not in your budget, right? And now I'm like, okay, friends, chat can do it for you. Do you understand? The integrations, they just integrated with Canva. 

Oh, I didn't know that. 

Oh, I am speechless.

I did it the other day. It made a graphic input, the information, and then gave me a link to go. I call it slurping. It's a very non fancy digital word. Slurps it into my Canva so that I can do any minimal rearranging. It's helping me write, so I'm. One of the products that I'm working on is to have a daily social media planner with an idea for a caption, an idea for, things like that.

It's helping me write that. So I am inputting the information, but it's helping me to format it and create it. It's. I don't even know. I feel so excited to talk about that. You can ask it for a whole calendar. You can ask it for... 

I'm so excited. 

Okay. I want to, because this is going to come up straight away, which is, but isn't it cheating?

Okay. I love this question so much. So if you take a voice lesson and your brilliant teacher teaches you something that then helps you hit that high note better than everybody else, is that cheating? Or did you go and make the effort to learn that? Are you trying to belt that high, you know, by doing all this effort and work instead of doing a mix and blah, all the things that we all know about, right?

How I, I personally think that it's not cheating, it's efficiency. Okay. 

Because I love that. 

Yay. It's my idea. I'm in putting in the things and then, and I, and of course I've trained it, as you, you all would not believe if you look at my socials, how many times I've had. Chat, write it for me, but it's all the emojis and all the Karen isms and all my funny words and I like saying though, T H O with a, an apostrophe, right?

And things like that are cuz, C U Z. I've taught it all that. So it, if I say, help me write this, is what I usually start out with. Help me write this Karen style. And then I'll put the topic or subject matter in. And then I take two or three times to rework it, generally speaking, so that it really becomes mine.

Or a really good one is to say, help me write a draft. Then it puts the, it puts it in draft form and I've sent this to you now, so you know what I'm talking about. I've sent you a draft and then you rewrite it to yourself. Yeah. And what words come to your, you know, brain in that moment.

And then, so I, again, when we looked at encyclopedias to get information back in the day, was that cheating or was that researching? 

Okay, let's pick this apart because there's so much, there's so much I want to go into. 

You go first. I've got a couple of questions I want to ask afterwards, so I'll just write those down.

So the first thing about cheating, and this has come up a lot for me when I'm talking. to people about ChatGPT and stuff. The first thing about cheating is but you've got someone else to do it. The first, my first reaction is exactly what you've just said, which is no, you are doing the input. But also what's really important for me when I started using ChatGPT is what I noticed is that the first draft never works.

So you can go back in. Honestly, the first time I ever used it, I put some instructions in and it came up with an entire course from top to bottom. And I just let my jaw genuinely dropped. 

You know what? It wasn't bad. 

It wasn't bad. I know. What's interesting is that, yes, you've got that structure and it can build structures for you that are based on things that are already existing and already work.

Where it gets really interesting is what you do next, which is you go back in and you go, I want to change this, I want to change that, I want to make you less formal here, I can give you a tone of voice that I want it to be written in. That's right. And really what you're doing in my head is that you are using the most amazing secretary slash PA slash co writer to create something that starts in your brain that somebody else formats in a way that you just don't have the skills to do right now, let alone the time.

That's right. 

And then you come back and it's still your stuff because it's still your permission as to whether that's going to go out or whether you're going to do something different with it. Yes, I think the difficulty for most people is, but that's copying from somebody else and there's a whole plagiarism thing, which is quite awkward I think Gillyanne wants to come in now.

Yes, please. 

I'm very excited about this because I remember you doing that, and it was good and obviously you inputted things that you knew you wanted to do in that particular course. Yes. But there, is there not the danger, and it's something we need to be aware of, that somebody, could maybe someone, bless them, who's just out of college and, they go in and they say I want to create, the best possible course on singing voice and in this style and off goes the AI and comes back with a whole structure.

And it looks fantastic on paper. And how will people know the difference between that and the real thing? In other words, someone who's got the experience to deliver something at that level unless they pay the money and do it? Is that something we need to be conscious of? 

I think as consumers we need to be conscious of that, for example, If I'm going to purchase a course and I do a little bit of research and I'm like who is this person and how did they gain those skills?

And lastly, if I ask them a question, how are they going to answer it? That's the game that I think we all need to play because sure, we're, there are going to be and no doubt already are. There are going to be people who are driving a Ferrari who should be driving their first, 1980 Mustang down the street and practicing, but they're jumping in the Ferrari and Oh Lord. So that's going to happen. I think then as with anything, we understand as we need to understand as consumers that when you purchase something from a known expert, that's going to make the difference, I think, than somebody who, now, not to say that brand new people don't know things, they certainly do. That will be the time when you have an email conversation with that person, you DM them on LinkedIn, Hey, I saw this cool course.

Can we, do you have, can we chat about it? Do you have five minutes on zoom? Can we chat in the G in the DMS and see how they react? Because certainly anybody who has created something who is knowledgeable about it is also generally speaking excited to share. They want to teach. They want to say, so that person's really good because I taught them, right?

We, as teachers, we automatically want to say that. So I think it will be up to the consumer to make sure that they know, because there is no doubt that those things are going to happen, friends. No doubt. But I think of it as a filter. When you, those filters that we've seen on TikTok and Instagram, and then you see that person in person and you're like, Whoa, okay.

Those are scary. How, what we can do with filters. 

I think this is super important because we know even with our cohort 22 that, we've had conversations with a couple of them as to what led them to us. And one of our practitioners who lives in India said she'd looked at a whole load of stuff on the internet. And I can see now that, that her generation and younger generation will be using internet searches and they will be using YouTube presentations and they will be looking at these, big, dare I say big fuck off platforms that people are putting together with AI, know, that, that wonderful statement that that they're looking at those and they might not know the difference and that's right. So to learn to have that filter to interact with people. I know for me when I see a new business sometimes and I go, Blimey, that looks amazing. Who are they? Why is there no bio? Where does it come from? What's their background? Looks fantastic, but you're not actually telling me who's behind this.

Personally, I don't like that either. Because when you're working with voice and you're working in education, you have that energy exchange. You want to know who those people are. 

Yes. And that brings us right into social media, right? This is where the social proof becomes absolutely. It's essential. I'm going to use that word.

It's absolutely essential to have your social proof. And what is the fastest way for social proof? yourself. There is one thing that I know deepfake, assuming deepfake, we're not talking about that because that's very high level. And I'm going to presume that most people don't even know how to do that.

But if it's Karen out there talking on the socials about any of this stuff, social media, AI, voice lessons, you know, all of those kinds of things, I'm, it's going to be a much. faster process for the person who doesn't know me to see, Oh my gosh, what is this girl talking about? She really knows what she's talking about.

And then also they decide that's the personality for me. That isn't. All of those things are great, but that's why it's really essential for video and those short reels. And Gillyanne, you've gotten just fantastic. are truly fantastic at them. And you, and let's face it, I'll say it for you because I know you won't say it.

I look at the insights all the time. Every time you have a video that where you're just talking in your backyard and especially with the chickens, I'm just saying. Pajamas. Chickens and pajamas every time. Cue chickens. 

And Karen, we're not going to let them in, but, the chickens have arrived. The chickens have arrived. I think they must have heard you, heard your voice, heard what you said about them. So they're just preening outside. 

 Those have. The biggest bang for the buck and friends just to give a little behind the scenes.

I look at that stuff. We figured it out. We have it in. I plan out, you know, the week or two for vocal processes social media, and. We know that once or twice a week there will be faces that you recognize and that you know and love on those socials Because that's what's going to give and again, it gives the biggest bang for the buck.

That's why I'm not a Let's schedule 50 graphics that, I'm not, I should say, it's not that doesn't work. That's just not for me. That's not the kind of social media work. I think it's not as valuable as one, 10 graphics are not as valuable as one video. That's just a fact. 

That is so good to know.

It's so good for our people to know as well. And I shall continue to go and record lives in my pyjamas and over my second cup of tea. Absolutely. 

Can we just say how hard you had to work to persuade us to get on video now? Yeah. We hated it. We have so avoided video for so long.

 If I have a bad hair day and I don't want to know.

My, 

my eyelash didn't wanna go on this morning, 

all of that stuff. And now in the end, that was why I actually, one day I just for fun recorded something in my pajamas and I thought, do you know what? I don't care. 

But doesn't that often happen? Yeah. Yes. That thing happens. 

It's authentic. Yes, it's hugely authentic and let's, you know, without giving away the farm. We've, we made the decision and I know I was very encouraging on this to do everything on YouTube, this podcast. And I mean, friends were well, we're on the way to being monetized and a YouTube partner. Woo. It's just so exciting and it doesn't happen overnight.

Of course it doesn't happen. It doesn't, it's you two work so hard. You do so many things. You're at, you're a one stop shop. Same as me, the editing that you're the filmmaker, the editor, the director, the producer. 

Yes, all of the above.

 And, but the, but it is showing its worth and merit because, people are finding out about you and tomorrow, today's Friday, right?

Yeah. So tomorrow's the, truly the official announcement, but that you've become a NatsCast podcast network partner. 

So thrilled. So pleased. 

It's just so thrilling to just that, those are the kinds of metrics that we're looking at. Those vanity metrics. I have a thousand followers.

Friends. You can look at my socials, just go look at them. I post so irregularly, so terrible on my own stuff, but I'm consistent. It's every week ish there's consistent for you. And and my socials are doing great as a performer and voice teacher and on my social media account. And it's because I. I'm, I do biggest bang for the buck. Either it's a great gig or I'm doing a voiceover, audiogram or a video, it just, every time it just works. 

There's something really strong about this because it's a very fine line, I think, between being able to just share whatever you're doing on online, on the socials and also burnout.

Yes. Yes. Can we talk about that? Oh, yes. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it because for sure it's a real thing and I'll tell you, I have a, another core value. It's probably my number one. And if you, by the way, you should sign up for my newsletter to be very honest with you. I don't send it out too often.

It is jam packed with info. 

And it's such a fun read, Karen. I encourage anyone to have that newsletter. 

Yep. Me too. 

Thank you. Thank you so much. I definitely try to make it fun and peppy, but I constantly talk about curating your feeds ruthlessly. It is the number one way to avoid burnout. And what I, what do I mean by curate your feeds ruthlessly? I don't see, almost nothing negative. I'm going to be honest. I don't. And it's not because I'm looking at the world through rose colored glasses.

Although I do, that is a true statement about my personal self. I organized this. In such a way if I'm on Facebook, let's go through each platform. If I'm on Facebook and I have a friend who's either super political or they're in a bad moment or all of those things, I simply mute their feed. Boom.

Okay. One caveat to that is you should always, it's your platform. If you need to talk about some shiz you're going through, please do that. That's your business. You can do that. We don't have to read all of it. That's the game. It's your platform. 

Can we, let's rewind that, because this is really important.

It is.

It's your platform. It's your story. It's your life. It's your viewpoint. It's whatever you want to put out there. 

That's right. 

Other people do not have to read it. 

No, they don't. 

They have the choice. 

They have the choice. 

That is the game. I will mute their feed, right? And on Instagram, you at the top left, the word Instagram, and you tap that, there's a Favourites and a Following.

I only look at Following. Unless I'm doing research for a client, right? And then I'll just scroll, scroll, but I only look at Following. And then when I, like when I'm literally on my off time, I'll only look at Favourites. People that I love, accounts that I don't know, but I love their content. You know that?

Okay. Twitter. This is perfect because everyone's Karen, Twitter, it's such a mess and this and that. And now it's X. And, I'll tell you what my icon on my phone is pink. So the X is pink. I have lists on Twitter. You make lists, X, you make twit, you make lists. And I only look at those people. And it's so funny right now, everyone on Twitter is offering all these great things because they're trying to entice you.

I'm in a podcast cohort. I'm in a writing cohort and I just go on there and I look at my lists and then I look at my people and. It's just all the stuff I want to see. LinkedIn, that one's really easy. Mostly people are not posting junk over there. Let's talk about the scariest one. TikTok. My friend was like, Oh, all they do is yell at you.

And I'm like what are you looking at? She said, I'm looking at that for you, for you feed. And I'm like, girl, what is happening? Don't look at the, for you feed. You go through and follow who you like. And then you just look at the follow feed. I'm being tough about this one because again, I'm all about personal responsibility.

Please don't tell me how awful the socials are because I don't see it because I'm curating my feed in such a way that I'm learning, I'm growing and I'm getting inspired and I'm feeling good. That's what social media really is, right? It's connecting people who, you and I. The three of us have never met in person.

I literally consider you family and friends. Like If you were like, I'm going to be in Vegas. Karen do you have a place to stay? Yes. I, it's I wouldn't even think about it because we've seen each other so much on, on video chat and in the socials. Yeah. And that's the kind of connection I'm talking about.

Imagine what you could do if you didn't have that burnout ucky feel. Imagine what you could do. Now, the other way that you can really do this is only do it for work. So you make your video, you film yourself, you've got your phone. Here's my phone. I'm going to film myself however way. You write your thing on Canva.

You auto post from Canva. You auto post from Business Suite. Both of those are free. The Canva Pro account is not free, but you can auto post from there if you have the free. Business Suite on Facebook is free. You can schedule posts on TikTok on many platforms for free. So I'm trying to think of all the very low cost things.

And you don't even have to go on the platform. You don't even have to go on the platform. That's not optimal. I'll be honest. It's always optimal to, to actually interact. The platform will reward your efforts. However, if you're in a, if you're busy, if you're in a state where you're, you feel it, you're feeling you're in a weakened state and you need to be careful, by all means, your mental health must be number one.

Do the work outside of the platforms. Schedule them in. Ask a friend to look. Does this look good? Off we go. 

That's super interesting. And actually you've explained about how to curate your feed in a way that I wasn't aware of on Instagram. And so I'm going to go right after we've recorded this podcast and do that.

Perfect. We know that we have so much more to talk about, but we do have to stop at this point. So we're going to invite Karen back again for another episode. So we will see you, Karen, next time. 

That sounds great. Bye. Bye.

This is A Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.