Rise of AI Voice: From SAM to Storyline
How to Use Storyline’s AI Features
“His name is SAM, and he is amazing!”
As a kid, my first computer was a Commodore 64 — an amazing little computer that only had 64KB of memory (For comparison, my current phone has 12GB of memory or 12,000,000KB!). Yet, with only that tiny fraction of storage — of which only 39KB was available for programs — my computer could talk.
The program was called SAM (Software Automatic Mouth), and it came in a fancy box with a disk and a manual. After inserting the 5¼-inch floppy disk in my trusty Commodore disk drive, typing a series of commands, and then waiting for the program to load, my computer was ready to talk.
(Image courtesy of the Internet Archive)
It spoke, after a fashion, and could give speeches and play a number guessing game. Although the voice was ridiculously hard to understand and not very useful by itself, it was very cool in 1982. Check out this clip of SAM greeting us! (Note: The audio is hard to understand and illustrates the limitations of speech technology from the early 1980s).
Flash forward to the present where computer speech synthesis has improved greatly and is now incorporated into our phones, smart speakers, cars, and, of course, our e-learning courses!
One of my favorite tools is Storyline, which has included Text-to-Speech functionality almost since it was first released — and it can greet us too.
In late 2024, Articulate added AI-generated audio to Storyline, producing voices that sound much more natural.
Recently, Articulate has enhanced the AI Assistant with more voices along with new tools to help you find and organize them. Let’s go through some steps to use this updated feature.
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Note: To use the AI features in Articulate Storyline 360, you’ll need have a subscription to “Articulate 360 AI,” as the AI voices aren’t available in the Standard subscription.
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How To Use: Text-to-Speech
Choose your AI voice by selecting Insert Audio > Text to Speech in the AI Assistant section of the Storyline 360 interface. Then, in the dialogue box that opens, select the Voice drop-down.
Each voice includes a character description, some keywords, and an audio sample so you can hear what the voice sounds like. There are many more voices than shown in this image. You can access these additional voices by selecting More voices at the bottom of the list.
How To Use: My Voices
You can also select My Voices, located on the top of the Generate AI Audio dialogue box, to access voices that you have used in past projects.
In the My Voices pop-up, you’ll be presented with a page that I like to think of as each character’s “business card.” These cards list the current voices, along with their names and a series of keywords that describe them (e.g., Man, Woman, Middle aged, Young, American accent, British accent, Crisp, Narration, etc.).
Filters give you options to sort your list of voices by Source, Gender, Age, and Accent.
To add more voices to your My Voices list, select the Voice Library button.
How to Use: The Voice Library
The Voice Library opens and displays an extensive list of voices you can add to your My Voices library. This is known as an infinite list; it will add more voices as you scroll down. Click the Add to My Voices button to save a voice to your list or click Use to apply it directly in the Generate AI Audio dialogue box.
Selecting Filters lets you filter by gender, age, or use case. There’s also a text box where you can enter other sorting criteria, such as language, character name, or one descriptive keyword.
Finally, the Sort drop-down box allows you to filter by Trending, Latest, Most Used, or Most Characters Generated.
Not all the characters have unique names — there are multiple Joes, Franks, etc. — so note more attributes than just the name when browsing. Otherwise, you may have hard time remembering which “Joe” you chose.
How to Use: Advanced Settings
Once you select your character, you can adjust their voice using the Advanced settings. These settings include:
- Model Used: Determines speed and quality of audio generation in Flash version
- Stability: Controls voice consistency across multiple audio generations
- Similarity: Determines how closely the AI stays to the original voice
- Style Exaggeration: Controls the naturalness of the tone and can amplify character style
I tend to leave these at their default settings and only adjust them in special situations, such as when a character needs to be more or less emotional, or when more vocal variation is needed.
Overall, Articulate AI voices are a nice addition to your toolkit, and the diverse range of character voices should keep us from always hearing the same “Joanne” or “Matthew.”
Ode to SAM
Thinking back to SAM, it’s clear we’ve come a long way in computer voice generation. SAM was innovative for its time, but voice generation has since evolved to become more natural and human-like. If you want to experience SAM for yourself, check out this GitHub library.
Explore the new features of Articulate Storyline’s AI Assistant tools, discover a new character voice to use in your learning deliverables — whether e-learning, video, or digital performance support — and keep reaching for that next innovation.
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Additional Resources
LT2 Episode 15: Revolutionizing Training Using AI?
LT2 Episode 16: Unpacking New AI Features in Articulate Storyline and Rise