Martha Stewart just got brutally honest about social media — and yes, she has opinions. The 84-year-old lifestyle legend says she actually learns a lot from Instagram, but there’s one thing she simply can’t stand: that voice.
On Monday, February 16, Stewart joined Lauryn and Michael Bosstick on The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast, where she was asked what she sees online that feels untasteful. Stewart didn’t hold back.
“It’s that voice. That guy’s voice. I hate his voice so much,” she said. “You know, the guy who is giving instructions all the time, that high kind of high-pitched voice. It’s the voice of a robot. That voice… that is an awful voice.”
She added that the sound is everywhere — even on content she otherwise likes. “I don’t like that that same voice is used for so many, sometimes really good projects,” the Emmy-winning TV host said, noting that it feels like an announcer’s voice that’s been pushed into something harsher and less natural. “It was based on a person’s voice… but it’s worse than any voice that was ever on the radio.”
While it’s not entirely clear which specific voice Stewart is referring to, her description fits a style most people recognize: that AI text-to-speech “instruction” narrator you hear over everything from recipe tutorials to motivational clips to random fact videos. As reported by Shopify, the text-to-speech feature took off around 2020 after launching as an accessibility tool, but its rollout didn’t stay straightforward.
In 2021, voice actor Beverly Standing sued TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, alleging the platform used a robotic version of her voice without permission, according to the BBC. Not long after, “Jessie” — voiced by Canadian radio host and voice-over artist Kat Callaghan — became one of the app’s most recognizable voices.
Since then, both TikTok’s built-in options and third-party AI voice generators have flooded social media with synthetic narrators, and the male AI voiceover Stewart is describing has become one of the most recognizable — and, for some viewers, most polarizing — sounds online.
This story was originally published by Parade on Feb 17, 2026, where it first appeared in the Entertainment section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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