In this episode of Reimagining the Contact Center, Marc Bernstein sits down with Lily Clifford, Founder and CEO of Rime, to unpack the emotional mechanics of spoken language, the cultural expectations we attach to voice technology, and why some AI voices make us uneasy while others feel oddly familiar.

Marc and Lily explore how human communication isn’t just about words—it’s about cadence, intention, and identity. They discuss the risks of blurring the line between synthetic and human, how different generations are reshaping voice tech expectations, and why making a voice “believable” is more about respect than realism.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction

01:08 Mechanics of the Human Voice

04:33 Foundations of Human Conversations

09:52 Where is the Bottleneck?

14:40 Social Standards or AI Voice

18:45 Human Likeness of AI Voice

21:27 Ecosystem of Voices

27:48 Indistinguishable from Human Voice

33:45 What is Next for Rime?

40:00 AI in 3 Years