Since September, the voice on this show has been an AI copy of mine, rented from a company for about two dollars an episode. This week I made a second copy — on my own laptop, for free, from eight seconds of audio. This episode is voiced with the free one.

So the obvious question for a show called Worth the Click: is cloning your voice worth it, and which one should you use? The honest answer depends on how often you make audio, and the real cost was never the subscription.

In this episode:

• What two dollars an episode actually buys, and why it isn't the voice
• Eight seconds of audio and no training step — what the free local one does
• The three things the paid one still does better, including the four takes you get to choose from
• Five gigabytes, forty minutes of laptop fans, and one command: the real price of free
• House rules for cloning a voice, including the one that matters most
• Who should skip all of this and just record a voice memo in the truck

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Mentioned: the last site rescue, The Plumber You Can't Call.

The voice you're hearing is an AI version of my own voice. The stories and the opinions are all mine.