Bringing characters to life with Text-to-Speech—this duck avatar is more than just a cute face. By fine-tuning voice and personality, we’re learning how to add emotional depth and presence, turning simple designs into fully realized characters in our digital worlds.
This week, we’re adding another layer of immersion to our work—voice. Using Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology, we’re learning how to bring our AI-generated characters to life with their own voices. This isn’t just about turning text into speech; it’s about adding an emotional dimension to our digital characters. The voice becomes another tool in the storyteller’s toolkit, helping to define each character’s personality, tone, and presence within the space.
As artists, we’ve been experimenting with different voice types, adjusting pitch, tone, and cadence to match the character’s role in the story. This process has been a collaborative effort, as we share ideas on how to match voice to narrative, and how to ensure the integration of voice adds to the emotional depth of the experience. Working with TTS has allowed us to take our characters beyond the screen and into the viewer’s world in a more tangible way. It’s a skill we’re developing as part of our collective journey, and it adds another powerful dimension to the stories we’re telling—bringing voice and character into the immersive worlds we’re learning to create.
Learning to integrate TTS technology requires gaining a basic familiarity with audio programming and speech synthesis. Handling real-time audio processing within web environments is a challenging skill that blends both technical and creative elements, ensuring voices in our virtual gallery space are not just functional but enhance the experience artistically.
What else are we learning? In the context of traditional arts training, this project introduces a new perspective on how technology can serve the creative process. Just as artists have always pushed the boundaries of their medium—whether through brushstrokes, film techniques, or performance—our project represents an extension of that tradition into the digital age. The techniques learned here—such as using AI for narrative generation, adjusting the environment based on the emotional tone of a story, and how that can contribute to crafting interactive spaces—are all vital skills that artists need to understand in order to participate in the future of digital and artistic innovation.
AI Tools to help with your next art project
Whether you’re building an online, virtual gallery or creating music and images, there are a whole bunch of AI tools out there that can help you with your next art project. Here’s some of our favourite current AI platforms we like to use:
Krea.AI is a powerful AI-driven creative tool designed for artists, designers, and content creators looking to generate high-quality images, textures, and visuals effortlessly. With advanced generative AI, Krea.ai enables users to create unique digital art, concept designs, and photorealistic renders using state-of-the-art diffusion models.
SeaArt.AI provides a seamless ai generator experience for generating artistic masterpieces, making it a go-to platform for AI-assisted creativity, ai drawing and innovation.
Pika.Art is an AI art generator that offers a whole bunch of unique artistic styles, enhancing creative workflows, or generating AI-assisted animations, Pika Art offers a seamless and powerful solution for next-level creative expression.
iLoveSong.ai is an AI-powered music generator that enables users to create unique songs with customizable male or female vocals, offering outputs in MP3 and MP4 formats.
The OpenAI Researcher Access Program democratizes cutting-edge AI research by providing early-career researchers and underfunded institutions with access to advanced models, accelerating innovation in machine learning, natural language processing, and AI ethics.
About our Winter 2025 program
Our fall and winter 2025 program in Winnipeg, Manitoba, is focused on exploring the intersection of digital skills, storytelling, creative entrepreneurship, and leadership in the arts. We’re dedicated to equipping artists with the tools and knowledge to navigate the evolving digital landscape, empowering them to bring their creative visions to life in new, innovative ways. This program is a space for collaboration and growth, where artists can sharpen their digital skills, explore the potential of emerging technologies, and build the leadership capabilities needed to drive their own creative ventures forward. This year’s program activities are supported by the OpenAI Researcher Access Program and the Manitoba Arts Council.
