Season 4 of HIGH NOTES, the Bristol-made podcast about the business and art of voice, will drop from Thursday 8th October for seven weeks. It will see host Melissa Thom talking to leading figures on both sides of the AI debate: those whose voices have been affected by AI, and those using it for good.

What happens to the human voice as AI gets good enough to replicate it? It’s a conversation that reaches further than most people think, affecting not just performers, but anyone who’s ever recorded a voice note, sat in on a Zoom call, or had their voice used by the business they work for. If you speak for a living, work with people who do, or just want to understand what’s happening to your own voice in an AI-shaped world, this season’s for you.

The full line up of episodes and release dates are as follows:

Thursday 8th October

Episode 01: AI or human voice? Why brands choose both, with Mark Graeme from OCX (Omnicom Production) and Mark Eaves from Gravity Road

This episode explores when and why a creative studio chooses AI over a human voice, and when it doesn’t, from two vantage points in the advertising industry.

Mark Graeme is Head of Studio at OCX UK (Omnicom Production, part of Omnicom Group, the world’s leading marketing and sales company). Mark and his team produce work for creative agencies such as Adam & Eve/TBWA, AMVBBDO, and McCann, plus work directly with a mix of local and global brands. He has also hosted the Shiny Awards, supporting emerging directing talent.

Mark Eaves is Founder of Gravity Road, part of The Brand Tech Group, working across brands including Unilever, Booking.com and TikTok. He led Gravity Road’s build of ‘Ode,’ an AI poetry companion made in partnership with Microsoft AI and Poetry Pharmacy founder William Sieghart. ‘Ode’ is trained on Sieghart’s own voice to listen and prescribe a poem. Every poem is read aloud by a real actor – Stephen Fry, Harriet Walter, Dominic West and Indira Varma among them – rather than a synthetic voice.

Between them, Melissa gets the industry-wide picture and one deeply considered case study, both circling the same question creative directors are still grappling with: AI or human voice?

Thursday 15th October

Episode 02: Cloned Without Consent, with Voice Actor, Faye Dicker and Equity’s Shannon Sailing

Voice actor, Faye Dicker, discovered her voice had been cloned and sold via a US platform without her consent. It was downloaded more than 900 times before it was taken down. She’s joined by Shannon Sailing, Industrial Official for Audio and Games, from Equity, who dealt with Faye’s case and is now handling a wave of similar claims.

Thursday 22nd October

Episode 03: UK AI Law: Unfit for Purpose? With Dr. Mathilde Pavis

In this episode Melissa talks to Dr Mathilde Pavis, an expert in intellectual property law, ethics and new technologies, who helped build Equity’s AI toolkit and has worked directly with AI platforms including ElevenLabs.  Melissa asks her why the UK currently has no personality right for voice, how that compares to other countries, and whether the law is catching up in time. The real value here is practical: exactly what to check, ask and do to protect your own voice, as things stand today. The landscape is changing fast, so staying informed matters more than ever.

Thursday 29th October

Ep 04: Across all sectors: Games, Dubbing, Ads and Animation with Actor and Voiceover Artist David Menkin

David Menkin is a London-based actor and voiceover artist with an impressive portfolio across commercials, dubbing, animation and gaming, including major AAA titles, Lego Star Wars, Final Fantasy XVI and Pragmata. In this episode Melissa talks to him about how working across these four sectors creates very different relationships with AI risk. They also discuss David’s advocacy work on how performers are treated by development studios, and whether any one sector is leading the way on AI and human voice working together.

Thursday 5th November

Episode 05: The Audiobook Pipeline with Dan Jones
Storytelling’s as old as language, but the recorded audiobook industry is barely three generations old, and already facing real disruption. AI-narrated titles now make up around 23% of new releases in the US, and Audible alone has released over 40,000 of them. Yet the Audio Publishers Association’s own data shows willingness to actually try AI narration has been falling, not rising. Dan Jones spent 22 years at Hachette, one of the world’s biggest publishers, 7 of those as Head of Audio Services, and is now an Audio Specialist and Senior Manager at Glassboxx, and a visiting coach 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 he thinks the human voice in audiobooks goes from here.

Thursday 12th November

Episode 06: Owning and protecting your voice with BAFTA award-winning actress, Cissy Jones
Melissa talks to BAFTA award-winning actress Cissy Jones, known for voicing Delilah in Firewatch, alongside performances in The Walking Dead, Baldur’s Gate 3, Fallout 4, Starfield, Life is Strange, Halo 5 and The Owl House. Cissy is co-founder and CEO of US-based company Ethovox, the only voice AI company owned and run by voice actors.

Ethovox has an agreement with SAG-AFTRA, made during the video game Interactive Media Agreement negotiations, to build a foundational voice model on a union contract. How an individual performer’s own voice replica is actually used, SAG or non-SAG, remains a separate decision made by that performer and their agent. Melissa asks Cissy what performers should check before licensing their voice, and whether her model is the exception to the rule or a preview of where the rest of the industry is heading.

Thursday 18th November

Ep 07: Negotiating AI: Inside a Talent Agency with Bonnie Nordling
AI is now a significant factor in negotiating VO contracts, so in this episode Melissa sits down with Bonnie Nordling and asks what negotiation looks like in a talent agency for 2026. Bonnie is the MD of Nordlings, representing around 200 voice actors across commercials, animation and gaming. Bonnie talks through her agency’s approach to negotiating AI clauses, where AI and human voice are working well together across her roster, and where there is more work to be done. She also gives her take on the agent’s role in the age of AI, and what she thinks the future holds.

Melissa Thom, HIGH NOTES host, said: “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.”

HIGH NOTES season 4 can be found at brava.uk.com/podcast and all major podcast platforms, from Thursday 8th October 2026. It is produced by Melissa Thom and engineered by Euan McAleece at BRAVA.

About BRAVA
Founded by experienced voice, speech and communications coach and voice actor Melissa Thom, BRAVA brings together acting and voice experts from the UK & US to deliver best-in-class training and advice. She has trained hundreds of people in communication and voice from the UK and beyond; from rappers and reverends to ad creatives and countesses.

Melissa also has decades of experience voicing projects for clients including Grand Theft Auto V for Rockstar Games, Elder Scrolls for Zenimax, LL COOL J, Google, Amazon, Late Night Tales and The British Red Cross, and has worked with corporate organisations including Lloyds Banking Group, Soho House Group, Hachette and the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). A BAFTA voting member and Women in Games Ambassador, she also hosts the HIGH NOTES podcast, featuring conversations on the art and business of voice.

About Melissa Thom

Melissa is a highly experienced voice actor, voiceover artist, and presenter, with over 17 years' experience voicing for global brands.