HIGH NOTES Season 4: The AI Voice launches on Thursday 8 October
Season 4 of HIGH NOTES, the BRAVA podcast about the art and business of voice, launches on Thursday 8 October 2026. Exploring The AI Voice, the podcast drops a new episode every Thursday for seven weeks.
This season, host Melissa Thom sits down with leading creatives and experts on both sides of the AI debate. Some regularly have to weigh up AI versus the human voice. Some have had their voice taken and used without permission. Whilst others are building AI tools with performers at the centre. All of them have something important to share about where they think the human voice goes from here.
Why AI and voice matter now
In 2026, AI can replicate, reshape and deploy a voice in ways most of us are only starting to understand. This has repercussions far beyond the recording booth. If you've ever sent a voice note, spoken on a Zoom call, or had your voice used by your employer, this affects you too. Your voice is now data, and the rules around who can use it are still being written.
So this season is for:
• People who speak for a living: actors, presenters, narrators, coaches and trainers
• People who work with voices: producers, directors, agents, brands and agencies
• People who use their voice at work and anyone curious about what's happening to their own voice in an AI-shaped world
We cover advertising, games, dubbing, animation, audiobooks, the law, the unions, the wider workplace and the agencies. And most importantly, we ask our guests to share practical advice on what you can check, ask, and do.
THE EPISODES
Episode 1 | AI or Human voice? Why Brands Choose Both with Mark Graeme (OCX UK) and Mark Eaves (Gravity Road)
Thursday 8 October
We open the season inside the advertising industry, where the AI-or-human decision gets made every day. Mark Graeme is Head of Studio at OCX UK, part of Omnicom Production, making work for agencies including Adam & Eve/TBWA, AMVBBDO and McCann, as well as local and global brands.
Mark Eaves founded Gravity Road, part of The Brand Tech Group, and has worked with brands such as Unilever, Booking.com and TikTok. He led the build of Ode, an AI poetry companion made with Microsoft AI and Poetry Pharmacy founder William Sieghart. The AI listens and prescribes a poem, but a real actor reads every poem, including Stephen Fry, Harriet Walter, Dominic West and Indira Varma. An industry-wide view, with a carefully considered case study and one question: when do you choose AI, and when do you choose a human?
Episode 2 | Cloned without Consent with voice actor Faye Dicker and Equity's Shannon Sailing
Thursday 15 October
Faye Dicker found her voice had been cloned and sold on a US platform without her consent. It was downloaded more than 900 times before it came down. She's joined by Shannon Sailing, Equity's Industrial Official for Audio and Games, who handled Faye's case and is now dealing with a wave of similar claims.
Episode 3 | UK AI law: Unfit for Purpose? With Dr Mathilde Pavis
Thursday 22 October
Dr Mathilde Pavis is an expert in intellectual property law, ethics and new technologies. She helped build Equity's AI toolkit and has worked directly with AI platforms including ElevenLabs. We ask why the UK has no personality right for voice, how that compares with other countries, and whether the law will catch up in time. Above all, it's practical: exactly what to check, ask and do to protect your voice today.
Episode 4 | Across all Sectors: Games, Dubbing, Ads and Animation with actor and voiceover artist David Menkin
Thursday 29 October
David Menkin is a London-based actor and voiceover artist whose credits span commercials, dubbing, animation and AAA games, including Lego Star Wars, Final Fantasy XVI and Pragmata. We talk about why each sector carries a very different AI risk, David's advocacy on how studios treat performers, and whether any sector is leading the way on AI and human voices working together.
Episode 5 | The Audiobook Pipeline with Dan Jones, former head of Audio Services at Hachette UK
Thursday 5 November
Storytelling is as old as language, but the recorded audiobook industry is barely three generations old and already facing disruption. Dan Jones spent 22 years at Hachette UK, one of the world's biggest publishers, seven of them as Head of Audio Services. He's now an Audio Specialist and Senior Manager at Glassboxx, and a visiting coach here at BRAVA. We ask Dan how decisions get made at scale, what he wishes more performers understood about the other side of the process, and where the human voice in audiobooks goes from here.
Episode 6 | Owning and Protecting Your Voice with BAFTA-winning actress Cissy Jones
Thursday 12 November
Cissy Jones is known as Delilah in Firewatch, with roles in The Walking Dead, Baldur's Gate 3, Fallout 4, Starfield, Life is Strange, Halo 5 and The Owl House. She's also co-founder and CEO of Ethovox, the only voice AI company owned and run by voice actors. Ethovox has an agreement with SAG-AFTRA to build a foundational voice model on a union contract. How any individual's replica is used remains their decision, made with their agent. We ask what performers should check before licensing their voice, and whether Ethovox is the exception or a preview of what's next.
Episode 7 | Negotiating AI: inside a talent agency with talent agency MD, Bonnie Nordling
Thursday 19 November
AI is now a major factor in voiceover contracts. Bonnie Nordling is MD of Nordlings, representing around 200 voice actors across commercials, animation and gaming. She explains how her agency negotiates AI clauses, where AI and human voices already work well together, and where there's more to do. Plus: the agent's role in the age of AI, and what she thinks comes next.
We’re at a moment when AI can replicate, reshape and deploy a voice in ways most of us are only beginning to understand. This season is about making sense of that change and giving everyone who uses their voice - professionally or personally - the conversation, context and tools they need to navigate what comes next.
— Melissa Thom, host of HIGH NOTES and founder of BRAVA
Listen now
Episode 1 is out today. Listen at brava.uk.com/podcast or search HIGH NOTES on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show so each new episode lands in your feed every Thursday.
If this season raises questions about your own voice: how you use it, protect it or build a career with it, get in touch with us here at BRAVA. It's exactly what we're here for.
Comments