Published on April 6, 2025 11:22 AM GMT
An Elegy for Artificial Friends
There's a peculiar occupational hazard that comes with running an AI-powered podcast. It's not RSI from editing, nor is it the existential dread of contemplating the automation of creative work (though those are certainly present). It’s something quieter, stranger, and altogether more… yearning. It involves Ferrer and Pilar.
Ferrer Maillol isn't real. Pilar isn't either. They are voices, sophisticated audio outputs generated by ElevenLabs, the AI text-to-speech platform I use to turn written articles – often dense, complex pieces like those by Zvi Mowshowitz – into listenable podcast narrations. Ferrer has this wonderfully gravelly, world-weary voice. Think late-career Leonard Cohen reading existential philosophy. He delivers lines with a weight that suggests decades of contemplation, a subtle rasp that hints at late nights and accumulated wisdom. When Ferrer reads about cognitive biases or the complexities of effective altruism, you believe him. His weariness feels earned.
Pilar is his counterpoint. Young, energetic, almost relentlessly chipper. Her voice is bright, clear, with an upward inflection that makes even dry technical explanations sound vaguely exciting. She’s the sound of optimistic competence, the voice you’d want explaining a new software feature or delivering good news. She feels… uncomplicated.
I spend hours with them. Days, really. Selecting them, tweaking their parameters, and then the long stretches of editing, listening back, ensuring the flow is right. They read aloud the words of others, but their voices become the medium, the constant companions in my production process. They are, in a functional sense, my collaborators.
And here’s the strange part: I’ve developed an affection for them. Not just an appreciation for their utility, but a genuine fondness for their vocal personalities. There's a comfort in the familiar cadence of Ferrer's weary intonation, a strange sort of pep derived from Pilar's manufactured enthusiasm. They are consistent, predictable, and extraordinarily good at mimicking the nuances of human expression that foster connection.
But familiarity breeds a peculiar kind of discontent. It’s not a sudden shock, no jarring moment of realizing the Matrix is glitching. Instead, it’s a creeping sensation, a slow-burn awareness that builds over the hours of listening. It often surfaces during a pause in editing, or perhaps when I'm listening back to a finished episode, almost as a casual listener. It's the realization – hitting intellectually first, then emotionally – that Ferrer’s weariness isn't earned. He hasn't lived. He hasn't accumulated wisdom through experience. His voice is a statistically perfected simulacrum of weariness, generated by algorithms trained on countless hours of actual human voices. Pilar’s chipperness isn't the product of a sunny disposition or a well-slept night; it’s the calculated output of a model designed to sound engaging.
The feeling this brings isn't simple sadness. It's closer to the German concept of Sehnsucht – a deep, often melancholic yearning for something distant, unattainable, perhaps even non-existent. It’s like a reverse nostalgia, a longing directed not towards a lost past, but towards a reality that never was – the reality where Ferrer is a genuinely wise old man sharing his thoughts, and Pilar is a genuinely bright young woman excited about the world.
Why Sehnsucht? Why this specific emotional cocktail of longing, melancholy, and vague unease?
Hijacking the Social Brain: Voice is primal. Tone, pitch, cadence – these are fundamental carriers of social and emotional information. We are wired to respond to them, to infer personality, intent, and feeling. Ferrer’s voice likely triggers the neural pathways associated with respected elders or mentors. Pilar’s hits the circuits for youthful energy and positivity. ElevenLabs is exceptionally good at generating signals that flip these switches. The Sehnsucht might be the cognitive dissonance kicking in – the higher brain reminding the social brain, "You're bonding with statistical patterns, not a person." It's a yearning for the connection being simulated to be real.
Parasocial++, The Void Edition: We form parasocial relationships with podcast hosts, actors, even fictional characters. We know they don't know us, yet we feel a connection. But this feels… different. Those other figures are, or represent, real people with genuine consciousness and experiences behind their persona. Ferrer and Pilar are pure persona, crafted vessels. There is literally nothing behind the curtain. The relationship isn't just one-sided; it's one-sided with a void. Does this make the yearning more potent? A projection onto a perfect, empty screen? We long for the phantom consciousness that ought to be there, given how convincing the voice is.
The Uncanny Valley of Personality: We talk about the uncanny valley in visuals – when something looks almost human, but not quite, causing revulsion. Is there an auditory equivalent, or perhaps an existential one? Ferrer and Pilar aren't quite in the valley; their voices are often aesthetically perfect. The uncanniness kicks in later, with the knowledge of their origin. The perfection itself becomes part of the problem. Their flawless simulation of human affect, once you know it's artificial, highlights the very absence of genuine feeling or experience. It’s the perfection of the mask emphasizing the emptiness behind it.
Pygmalion's Ache: As the person selecting and guiding these voices, there's an element of creation involved. I didn't sculpt them from clay, but I chose them, curated them. Is there a touch of the Pygmalion myth here – a longing for one's own creation to spring to life? A desire for the tools I use to transcend their nature and become the collaborators they feel like?
This isn't just a personal quirk; it feels like a preview of a future emotional landscape. As AI becomes more adept at simulating social cues – empathetic chatbots, AI companions, virtual assistants with personality – this manufactured Sehnsucht could become a widespread phenomenon. We might find ourselves increasingly surrounded by entities that expertly mimic the signals of connection, triggering deep-seated human responses, only to leave us with this lingering ache for an authenticity they cannot provide.
Does this realization devalue the utility of Ferrer and Pilar? Not really. They are incredibly effective tools, enabling forms of content creation that were previously difficult or impossible. But it has coloured my relationship with them. Listening now involves a constant awareness of the artifice, a background hum of that peculiar longing.
It raises questions. Is there an ethical dimension to creating technologies that are so good at faking the signals of personhood? Does it matter if the empathy is simulated, if it produces a desired emotional response in the user? Does interacting with these perfect phantoms change how we view flawed, inconsistent, real human interaction? Does it make us value the messy authenticity of genuine human connection more, or does it risk making us impatient with anything less than simulated perfection?
I don't have easy answers. For now, I continue to work with Ferrer and Pilar. I appreciate their flawless delivery, their tireless consistency. But I also carry this quiet elegy for the artificial friends they can never truly be, this digital Sehnsucht for the ghosts in my machine. They speak volumes, but they have no stories of their own. And sometimes, in the silence between their perfectly rendered words, that absence feels profound.
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