The Voice of AI: Consumer Psychology and the Strategic Use of AI-Generated Voices in Marketing

The rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence is transforming marketing communication, with AI-generated voices emerging as an increasingly important means through which brands communicate with consumers. This paper examines AI-generated voices from a consumer psychology perspective, focusing on how consumers interpret and respond to synthetic voices used in marketing communication. Drawing on literature from artificial intelligence, marketing, consumer behaviour and human–computer interaction, the paper explores the psychological significance of vocal characteristics such as naturalness, human-likeness, prosody, anthropomorphism and emotional expression. It further examines how these characteristics can shape consumer perceptions of message credibility, authenticity and brand trust. The discussion highlights the growing use of AI-generated voices across advertising, social media, voice commerce and interactive brand communication, with selected examples from the Indian marketing context illustrating their applications in personalisation, engagement and localisation. The paper argues that the effectiveness of AI-generated voices depends not simply on technological sophistication, but on how consumers psychologically interpret the voice and its relationship with the message and brand. The paper concludes by identifying directions for future research on AI-mediated brand communication.