Millions of people hear her voice every day. Meet the woman behind TikTok's text-to-speech voice, Kat Callaghan.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Yes, I'm the TikTok text-to-speech girl.
00:02My name is Kat.
00:03Sometimes you guys make me say some pretty horrendous things.
00:07It's pretty messed up.
00:09But I kind of think it's funny.
00:10My name is Kat Callahan.
00:17I am the TikTok voice best known as Jessie.
00:21This is kind of my regular voice, if you will.
00:23And then I have Jessie.
00:24And Jessie is a lot more like this.
00:27If you want me to say the word, yeah,
00:29simply type out, yeah, and then hit text-to-speech option.
00:33If you want me to die a little bit on the inside,
00:35every time you do it, then keep doing this.
00:38The reason why I think Jessie resonated with a lot of people
00:47is that she is kind of a lot more upbeat.
00:49You have a lot of TTS, text-to-speech voices
00:53in the past and currently, which are a lot more like this.
00:57And they kind of go more down every time they talk.
01:01It's more like this.
01:02And Jessie is very much like this.
01:04And she's very happy.
01:05And I think that that was really unique for people.
01:13Hi, it's Rebecca from Brute.
01:15Hi, it's Rebecca from Brute.
01:17Hi, it's Rebecca from Brute.
01:19I love listening to all the different text-to-speech options.
01:22And so you'll have your ones where maybe you're
01:25going to put out a video that's a little more serious.
01:28And I've seen this before where people use my voice for it.
01:31For example, bad idea, putting out a video like,
01:34my dog died yesterday.
01:36We had a funeral for my dog.
01:38That's why it's interesting to have all those different kinds.
01:41And maybe you could find one more monotone
01:43that works for your video.
01:44It's not just computer-generated voiceover.
01:48There's people behind it.
01:49Siri, for example, she is kind of the opposite.
01:53She is speech-to-text, as opposed to text.
01:56And then somebody pops up and does their voice.
01:58So that is also a person, too.
02:01Susan Bennett.
02:08When you guys have been asking me if I'm the voice on TikTok,
02:11finally, I can tell you guys, it is me.
02:15When it came time for me to decide,
02:17hey, my voice has been around on this app for a long time,
02:21people are sharing it, and they're using it.
02:23Maybe I should just let people know.
02:25So that's when I put out the TikTok.
02:27It does say, you know, you guys have been asking me.
02:30And the reason why it's phrased that way
02:32is because I have listeners.
02:34I'm on the radio here in Ontario, Canada.
02:37So I had people DMing me saying,
02:39this sounds like you over the last year and a half.
02:46I had people reaching out to me over the last couple of weeks,
02:50especially DMing me to say thank you.
02:53People who are visually impaired that
02:55weren't able to see videos that could now understand,
02:58at least by these text-to-speech options,
03:00have an understanding of what people were talking about
03:02or what people were watching.
03:03I also had people reaching out to me to say thank you,
03:07because they are content creators.
03:09They don't like hearing the sound of their voice,
03:11or they're just not comfortable doing it.
03:13So they'll use those text-to-speech options.
03:15I'm so happy to be an option for people,
03:18as I'm sure the other text-to-speech voices are,
03:20for people who aren't so comfortable.
03:21At the beginning, it was so different.
03:24I thought, I don't know if people are going to like it
03:26or use it.
03:27But then more and more people started to use it.
03:30And I'd be out in public,
03:31and I'd see people scrolling on TikTok,
03:33and I'd hear my own voice, and I'd just kind of go...
03:36I'd just laugh to myself, like, okay.
03:39Or my husband would be using it,
03:40because he used TikTok a lot.
03:41He used it a lot over the last couple of years.
03:44And he'd hear me, he'd say, oh, there you are again.
03:46Poor guy.
03:47Like, he doesn't stop hearing my voice, like, all day long.
03:50I was that kid that always got in trouble.
03:59One of those kids for talking in class,
04:01or talking too much, very social,
04:04and definitely liked to use my voice.
04:07So I kind of just naturally went toward, you know,
04:09broadcasting and using my voice,
04:11because I was, because I enjoyed it,
04:13and because I was passionate about it.