Help Me Choose My A.I. Voice
Who will be the fake voice of "I Might Be Wrong"?
Substack has a “read-aloud” feature that lets you hear articles read by an AI voice. This is great news for me, because research shows that 98 percent of I Might Be Wrong readers can’t read. The feature is easy to use: Call up an article in the Substack app and click the “play audio” button at the top-right. That will allow you to listen to the article while you’re driving, doing dishes, building a pillow fort, shaving crop circles into your pubes, having one last hit of meth before your killjoy wife drags you away to rehab, or putting googly eyes on an oven mitt and naming it “Doctor Grabbinstuff”.
The bad news is: You don’t get to pick the voice. I pick the voice. Substack gives me six A.I. voice options, each with a name that was probably chosen by a consultant who got paid $3 million to say “How ‘bout Stewart?”. And because this blog is strongly pro-democracy — except when I watch a CNN Town Hall of undecided voters, at which point I become a staunch monarchist for about 10 minutes — I’m going to let you, the common dipshit, choose the voice.
But just saying “vote for a voice” is boring, so I’ve developed backstories and A.I.-generated avatars for each candidate. Try to think of these as real people — try to picture them as six job applicants sitting nervously in the lobby of I Might Be Wrong enterprises, waiting to be called in for an interview. Imagine the elation one of them will feel when they learn that they got the job!!! And imagine the crushing disappointment the other five will feel when they receive a curt email telling them that we’ve decided to go a different direction. Picture how hard it will be for them to tell their spouse “I didn’t get the job…again.” Visualize the stress and feelings of inadequacy that will keep them up at night as they grapple with the fact that they can’t provide for their family. Imagine how devastating it will be to wake up one morning and find a note from their spouse telling them that they’ve taken the kids to Bora Bora and are starting a new life with a fitness model. Think about the rage they’ll feel towards you, the person who snuffed out their A.I. voiceover dream and sent them careening towards rock bottom. Maybe they’ll park their car outside your house tonight and spy on you through the window. Look at you…just going about your evening without a care in the world, totally oblivious to the suffering you caused. You smug motherfucker. People won’t stand for this forever. At some point, someone will reach their breaking point, and when that happens…
Anyway: This will be more fun if you picture that. Here is each applicant’s backstory, along with a voice audition that — unfortunately — is a phrase that Substack selected for them to speak. I wanted to have them read I Might Be Wrong passages — I wanted to have Victoria give a detailed account of E.T.’s struggles with erectile dysfunction in a posh British accent or make salt-of-the-Earth-sounding Oliver read the words of a sexy Russian spam bot. And with Substack’s read-aloud feature, that’s possible! But for this demonstration, I could only get them to read the passage that Substack chose.
Don’t forget to vote at the bottom!
Taylor
‘Sup. I’m Taylor — they/them. I’m all about three things: 1) Cruising the open road on my Harley Davidson “Fat Boy” 114; 2) Pounding brews with my chopper-loving compadres, the Filthy Foxes, and 3) Reflecting on the human condition through the insight provided by my favorite Substack newsletters. Landing this gig would keep me in Pabst and leather vests for a good long while, plus I gotta keep the ol’ Parole Fund topped off. People tell me that my voice purrs like a Triumph Bonneville on an open stretch of highway, so I might as well turn that into a few bucks — better than hustlin’ pool at Sloppy Pete’s! Plus I like Jeff’s stance on housing abundance — constraining the supply of essential goods is inherently problematic.
Taylor’s audition:
Oliver
ALLLRRRIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHTTTTT!!!!! Welcome back to everyone listening out there all across the Oli-verse. The is “All In with Oliver”, the podcast about respecting yourself, action-casting your dream reality, and staying ahead of the curve on the latest developments in the crypto world.
So, folks — big stuff here — I have a chance to become the voice of the political comedy newsletter I Might Be Wrong. Yeeeeeah. And I know you’re thinking “Big O, you’ve already got a platform,” but folks, this isn’t about me. This isn’t about me, or this podcast, or even the fine people at Horny Mutant All-In Power Supplements — this is about reaching people. Reaching people and helping them actualize their best selves and bring out the horny mutant inside them.
I’ll reach more people if I’m the voice of I Might Be Wrong. I’m already the voice of Rampage Energy Drink, Diamond Lamborghini Premium Vodka, and Dino-Wang Male Enhancement Breakfast Bars — I’m good at this stuff. And the more people I reach, the more I can teach them to be their best selves and learn the sports betting techniques that FanDuels doesn’t want you to know about.
Oliver’s audition:
Casey
I love Substack because I love writing. My perfect evening is curling up with a good book in my home library, which is filled with many other books. When I travel, I always bring a suitcase full of books, plus I only go places where there more books, and then I place my books next to the foreign books in the hope that they’ll spawn still more books. I sometimes serve myself dinner on a book, eat it with another, smaller book, and dip a third book in white wine and suck the fluid from the pages. I love books! When I die, I hope to come back as a book, and I will have lots of promiscuous sex with other books, because nothing appeals to me more than to be a book getting banged sideways by five to ten other books.
Books!
Books books books books books books books, books books books books books! Books books books books books books books, b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-books!
(to the tune of “Sweet Caroline”) Boooooks, books books books — BOOKS! BOOKS! BOOKS! — books books books books books books books - BOOKS BOOKS! BOOKS BOOKS! BOOKS BOOKS!
(books!)
Casey’s audition:
Stewart
Good evening: It’s Thursday, August 21, 2025, and this is my audition for this job.
My name is Stewart Hunkchestester, and I have served as Chief Authoritative-Seeming Guy for the BBC World Service for the past seven years.
I’ve devoted my life to becoming the Platonic ideal of a Very Serious British News Man. At age eight, I was admitted His Majesty’s School For Very Posh And Authoritative-Sounding Young Boys, I hold a degree in Camera Presence from Cambridge University, and I did three tours in Afghanistan as part of The Royal Navy’s elite Diction Squad. Every fiber of my being is devoted to making you think “This motherfuck must know what he’s talking about.”
I am an eighth generation Very Serious British News Man. My great-great-great-great-great grandfather had the honor of announcing to his hamlet that Napoleon had been defeated in Europe. And sure, he made this announcement ten years before Waterloo, Napoleon had barely begun his rampage across the continent, by my forebearer announced the news with such confidence and gravitas that everyone believed him. And that’s the thing: People will believe anything said by an aesthetically pleasing British man whose accent is so upper-crust that he makes Piers Morgan sound like a thug in a Guy Ritchie movie.
And that’s why I’d be an asset to I Might Be Wrong: People will believe anything Jeff says if they hear it from my voice. Jeff could say that Suriname had invaded China, he could say that Tide Pods cure male pattern baldness, he could say that Keyboard Cat had overthrown Putin in a bloody coup — you’ll believe it if the news comes from me. And what’s basically true for all people is emphatically true for Americans; speaking to an American in a posh British accent is like using the Jedi mind trick on a hapless storm trooper.
Stewart’s audition:
Cora
Greetings, good sir or madam! I hope this evening finds you well. It is with great excitement that I offer my services for this most exciting opportunity at I Might Be Wrong. Though it is with great trepidation that I do the same, for you see: I arrived here after falling into a time warp in the year 1906. Help!
Here is how I came to be disposed in the manner that I am at present. One evening, after taking the trolley home from a rousing performance of Mr. Souza’s marches in the Gazebo District, I endeavored to descend to the cellar to retrieve a block of ice, for it was such a sweltering evening that I was half-inclined to unbutton my bodice down to the middle of my neck. In the cellar, I was alarmed to find a small door most curious in nature, which I had never noticed, and which seemed to contain a pulsing light beneath it, and its presence vexed me thoroughly, for how could such a peculiar aperture exist in my own cellar without ever gaining the benefit of my attention?
And, upon creating a fissure in the egress, I was seized by the most commanding vortex, and deposited here, in the year 2025. My presence in this realm is most alarming, and I seek to return to the environs to which I am well-accustomed and which put my humors at ease. But before my chronological alignment is reconstituted, I wish to gain employment at a wage suitable for 2025, so that I may carry those monies with me to 1906, where they will be considered most substantial. Hence my endeavor to gain employment at I Might Be Wrong. Should my cadence and diction be to your pleasing, a vote in my favor would be resoundingly appreciated.
Cora’s audition:
Victoria
My beautifully-accented British speech hits your ear like a butterfly alighting on a daffodil. My voice sparkles and soothes at the same time, somehow conveying both the vivaciousness of youth and the wisdom of age. There’s a basis for this impression: I am currently completing my PhD in astrophysics at Oxford University, and am on course to be the youngest person ever to do so (I’m 24). In many ways, I’m the perfect audio companion, an intellectually lively compatriot whose thirst for intellectual stimulation matches yours.
There’s just one problem: I make you feel like absolute shit about yourself. Because I am indeed smart, young, energetic, well-heeled, I smell like a sheet of Christmas cookies fresh from the oven, and to call me “easy on the eyes” would be a criminal understatement. You should admire me, but actually you just hate me to the marrow of your fucking bones. If you’re a man, I seem unattainable; if you’re a woman, I seem like an annotated list of everything you should be but aren’t. Even when I’m silkily relaying the contents of a brilliant piece of writing, part of your brain will hear me yelling “YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!!” Some people will choose my voice because they want to be the type of person who enjoys my company and doesn’t feel threatened, but by doing so, they’re designing a hell for themselves in which they’ll be eternally flogged by their own insecurities.
And for that reason — and because Substack polls only have space for five options — I am removing myself from consideration in the ensuing vote.
Victoria’s audition:
No ranked choice voting?? And you call yourself a progressive...
I would like to hear your podcast voiced by Gilbert Gottfried (RIP).