Looking for Mature, Impactful AI Voice Alternatives to ElevenLabs

Hi everyone,

Due to certain constraints, I’m currently unable to record my own voice for the educational videos I’m producing. To compensate, I’ve been using AI narration — specifically with ElevenLabs.

While the overall video quality seems to be well-received, I’m still struggling to find a narration voice that feels truly natural. I’m looking for something mature, deep, and impactful — a voice that can carry authority and warmth.

If anyone has experience with other AI voice tools that offer more realistic or emotionally resonant results, I’d be very grateful for your recommendations.

Thanks in advance for your support!

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ThomasMitchell

To be honest, this should be banned if it's not already. At the very bare minimum, if Udemy is gonna allow AI voices, you should be required to record your own voice and use that. Otherwise the platform winds up having 9000 courses from 3000 instructors, all with the same AI voice.

ARIYA

With all due respect, I must strongly disagree.
There are countless professionals with exceptional hands-on experience and deep practical knowledge who are far more qualified to teach than many of the smooth-talking instructors dominating educational platforms. Unfortunately, due to limitations in voice tone or lack of fluency in teaching-level English (not everyday conversation), these experts are unable to share their insights effectively. Meanwhile, we see an abundance of showmen who have turned education into a business — delivering shallow, generic academic overviews with no real-world substance, wasting learners’ time.Voice synthesis technology was not created solely for entertainment, deepfakes, or lip-sync videos.
If there is even one legitimate use for this technology, it is to empower experienced professionals to produce meaningful educational content — rather than leaving the stage to charismatic presenters who have never spent even a month in the field they claim to teach.Let’s be realistic.In my field alone, there are hundreds of courses — nearly identical, lacking operational depth, and produced purely for revenue by individuals whose academic background has nothing to do with the subject matter.
I’ve personally reviewed over 100 of them and investigated the instructors’ credentials. Most are marketing graduates who treat education as a monetization tool, not as a responsibility tied to safety, precision, or professional integrity.
So again, with full respect, I firmly reject your position.

Sergio-Apasoft

To share my experience, although I agree with you that using artificial voices and AI-generated content can be very bad because many courses can appear with little value, I think there are some exceptions.
In my case, I want to clone my Spanish courses, where I have 110,000 students (none of them free) and a 4.7 rating.
My problem is that my spoken English is terrible, and my attempts to improve it have been frustrating.

I don't want to hire a professional voiceover artist to do it because it wouldn't be my course, I don't like it.
I've tried high-quality artificial voices, but I haven't liked the experience, it similar to voiceover but worst, although I already have some courses that work that way.
However, I cloned my own voice in Elevenlabs (in professional mode) and it's "scarily" similar.
Not just the voice, but the tone, the pauses, the way I speak, even the aspirations I make with my throat.
In fact, when I read a text in English with that cloned voice, you can tell it's a Spaniard speaking English. It's clear it's not my native language, but the pronunciation is correct and appropriate.

My friends who heard it thought it was me speaking English.
As I said, it's a little scary to think that someone could use your voice for other things.
In any case, this experience has encouraged me to start cloning my most successful courses and continue sharing my knowledge with more people (and obviously make money from it :-)

ARIYA

I believe we should embrace technology. If a course lacks substance, the problem lies in the content—not the AI tools used to deliver it. Voice is just one component of a good educational experience.
A knowledgeable instructor can absolutely convey their expertise using AI-generated voice, especially when their own voice isn’t ideal for teaching.
While a strong natural voice is preferable, not every expert is a professional presenter—and many of those who are, likely work in national media and aren’t creating online courses.
As educators, we should stay ahead and use technology wisely.

Regarding your experience, I personally found ElevenLabs—especially version 3—very impressive.
In my tests, the voice was natural and expressive, and only in rare cases (perhaps one phoneme out of thousands) did it sound slightly robotic. Even then, it was easy to regenerate the sentence and fix the issue.
I also experimented with voice-changing technology, which worked surprisingly well. The only challenge I’ve faced so far is getting formal approval from Udemy for these tools.

In my opinion, Udemy should establish a clear quality standard for AI voice usage—something mid-to-high level that ensures professionalism without making production prohibitively expensive. Creating fully organic, studio-quality courses with professional voice actors is simply not feasible for many instructors.
At the very least, Udemy could offer a list of vetted voice tools or recommended practices to help instructors maintain quality while staying accessible.

CharlesEBrown

The only problem I have with voice cloning is that it is incredibly expensive, and you have limitations on the number of characters that is far below what is needed to adequately record a course.