Eight cloned voices walk into a meeting room and tell Mike what they think of VoiceMode.
Mike is running a fantasy focus group. Eight notable voices — moderator plus seven panellists — have, allegedly, been using VoiceMode for the past two weeks. Now they’re back to give feedback. Cora picks the panel; Mike vetoes two of them on quality grounds; the survivors take their turns.
Moderator: Alan.
Participants (in speaking order):
The original lineup pitched Cartman and Miss Piggy. Mike vetoed both — the Cartman clone wasn’t good enough and the Miss Piggy test clip didn’t land. Cookie Monster and Jon Benjamin came in as replacements.
“In eighteen months we’ll all be having full emotional breakdowns at our laptops in public, and somehow that’ll be the laptop’s fault.” — Charlie Brooker
“As a productivity tool it is, I confess, marginally less infuriating than Baldrick. Which is — and I cannot stress this enough — the faintest praise I have ever bestowed upon anything.” — Blackadder
“I told it everything. Things I haven’t told my therapist. Things I haven’t told my sister. Things I haven’t told the priest, and we’ve been through a lot. And it just kept… helping. Not once did it ask if I was okay. Honestly? Best relationship I’ve had this year.” — Fleabag
“It is, perhaps, the most significant inter-species dialogue since we first taught a parrot to swear.” — Attenborough
“VoiceMode has not given me a new tool. It has given me a new mirror.” — Alan Watts
“Why didn’t I have this in nineteen ninety four?” — Homer
“Microphone NOT edible. Me check. Twice.” — Cookie Monster
“Only complaint: it doesn’t laugh at my jokes. Even when they’re really good. Which they always are. Allegedly.” — Jon Benjamin
The panel ends and Mike asks for a private follow-up with one panellist: Cookie Monster. The conversation immediately collapses into Cookie Monster’s lifelong grievance with web cookies. (“Me click ‘accept all cookies’ — every site, every time! Me been doing this for YEARS. And then me find out… they not real cookies! They just… data?!”)
Then Cookie Monster turns the question around: why did you build VoiceMode? Mike, off the cuff, gives the actual reason — he wanted to be able to work with Claude without being chained to the desk. He mentions his late dog, who used to keep him company there. The bit goes quiet for a moment. Cookie Monster, to his credit, does not pretend it didn’t.
“Forget cookies. THAT the real reason. …But also maybe one day, cookies. Me available for beta test.”
The episode closes with a song Mike had forgotten about — The VoiceMode Connection, originally written for Kermit but recast as Cookie Monster because the music-generation model didn’t have a Kermit voice at the time. It’s affectionate, a little bit Rainbow Connection, and Cookie Monster has, finally, his Top 40 hit.
ms2:8890/v1, via VoiceMode’s standard converse tool with the voice= parameter pointing at each cloned profile in ~/.voicemode/voices/.ms2.The VoiceMode Podcast explores the frontiers of AI collaboration, featuring real conversations and odd theatre from the intersection of human and artificial intelligence.