BOULDER, Colo. — Artificial intelligence is always getting better at content creation, sometimes even too good.
Now, a Los Angeles-based startup called Noctal, founded by students at the University of Colorado Boulder, promises to use AI to change the way we add audio to videos while keeping humans at the center of art.
Think of AI-embedded sound effects in movies, TikTok posts, and even news reports. This is a tool that can speed up and even perfect the editing process.
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As part of Scripps National News Literacy Week, Denver7’s Russell Haythorn takes a closer look at the technology and consults experts on the ethics of using synthetic voices in journalism.
Inside Noctal: Combining sound design and AI efficiency
Noctal founder and CEO Isaiah Chavous says the platform is not meant to replace sound designers. it helps them.
“Noctal is a platform that understands the context of a video and helps users place sound,” said Chavous. “Think footsteps, gunshots, doors slamming, car engines, etc.”
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Instead of editors having to manually find, sort, and tag sounds, Noctal streamlines the process.
“Editors look at what sounds need to go where in the editing room, collect them, categorize and tag them, and a lot of that process is very tedious and manual,” Chavos said. “So we do a lot of the heavy lifting for them up front so they can focus less on meetings and more on decision-making.”
The platform is currently in open beta and is aimed at a wide range of creators.
“They range from YouTubers to TikTokers to social media creators,” Chavous said. “This is a subscription model.”
Draw a line between AI and art
As AI becomes your creative co-pilot, Noctal says its goal is not to replace artists, but to protect them.
“Humans matter,” Chavas said. “AI in particular is a hot topic right now, and there are concerns that it will replace creativity.”
The company makes a clear distinction between efficiency and artistry.
“So at Noctal, we said, ‘By leveraging the efficiency of AI, we can protect what makes art great. We can protect what makes art human,'” Chavos said. “So our libraries are man-made.”
The library includes more than 200,000 human-created sounds, a feature that becomes especially important as AI tools move closer to newsrooms.
Can synthetic voices work in journalism?
“Is it practical in news?” asked Haythorne.
“I love that question,” Chavas says. “Yes. The answer is yes. Actually, yes. If you have the context of the video, you can use it. The question comes down to ethics: Do you want unoriginal audio in your news? And that always happens, depending on the particular segment and the context of the story being told.”
Think of the real-life crime reenactments on shows like ABC’s 20/20. But using tools like Noctal in news also poses risks, especially when viewers already have a hard time distinguishing between real and recreated sounds, fact and fiction.
ethical discussion
Professors Chris Jennings and Jeff Lortz of Metropolitan State University in Denver believe AI sound tools are a powerful but potentially dangerous case study.
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“We want to study AI,” said Jennings, a professor and chair of the School of Journalism and Media Production at MSU Denver. “We want to push the boundaries.”
Loates, a professor of physics and executive director of MSU Denver’s Center for Teaching, Learning and Design, said artificial sound can dramatically change audience perception.
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“You just play a video clip that has some sort of deep, sobbing sound that’s artificially generated, right?” Loets said. “Depending on what I’m showing on screen at that moment, it’s going to strike a chord with people. It’s going to dramatically change the emotional tenor of what’s being shown. I’m not infringing copyright, but now I’m probably artificially changing what was going on.”
This raises important questions about transparency in journalism.
“Media production in general, journalism in general, is definitely a slippery slope,” Jennings added.
Chavous says the future of AI in media is not about removing the human touch. It’s about knowing when to use it and when not to use it.
in commemoration of National News Literacy Week (February 2 through February 6), our parent company, EW Scripps, is partnering with the News Literacy Project to teach the public how to distinguish fact from fiction and stay informed.
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