Voice Studio is the most ambitious AI system I’ve built yet — a voice-first operating system grounded in my own knowledge, frameworks and intellectual property. In this episode, I walk you through exactly what I’m building, why I’m building it, and the architecture decisions that matter most.
What Is Voice Studio?
The idea behind Voice Studio came from two places: the concept of a second brain, and Andrej Karpathy’s description of large language models as a new kind of operating system. Instead of opening separate tools, searching through folders and repeatedly explaining the context of my business, I want to speak a task into a system and have it retrieve the right source material before doing the work.
Two Tiers — And Why That Separation Matters
Voice Studio has two distinct tiers:
- The confidential tier — for client work
- The creative tier — for my own business knowledge, frameworks, ideas and intellectual property
That separation isn’t just a label on a screen. It needs to exist in the architecture, the permissions and the retrieval process. Confidential client information should never be casually pulled into creative work. That’s one of the reasons we’re taking real time over the technical specification.
The Technical Stack
The underlying knowledge is being organised in Obsidian using Markdown files — a portable, structured format that’s easier for an AI system to retrieve. Voice Studio will use a locally hosted Qwen model and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
RAG is an important distinction here. I’m not claiming the model has absorbed all of my knowledge into its weights. When I give Voice Studio a task, the retrieval system identifies relevant material from my curated corpus and supplies that context to the model. The output begins from source material I’ve selected and approved — not just general model knowledge.
How It Actually Works
The flow looks like this:
- My voice provides the instruction
- The knowledge repository provides context
- The local model interprets the task and generates a response
- Integrations allow work to move into the tools and systems where it’s needed
Who I’m Building This With
I’m building Voice Studio with my AI developers, because this project needs technical expertise alongside my domain knowledge. My role is to define how I think, what the system needs to know, how confidential and creative work must be separated, and what quality looks like. Their role is to translate that into dependable architecture, access controls and retrieval logic.
The Problem It’s Designed to Solve
The real problem is capacity and scale. I have more ideas, experience and intellectual property than I can manually activate at the same time. Important work slows down because the knowledge exists — it’s just spread across previous projects, presentations, course material and my own head. Voice Studio is designed to make that knowledge operational.
It won’t replace my judgement or make final decisions. But it should help me begin from the right material, initiate tasks more quickly and use what I already know rather than continually recreating it. That’s what I mean when I talk about building the operating system for my business.
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About the Podcast Host
AI and Communications Specialist | Author | Podcaster | International Speaker
Joanne Sweeney is a recognised leader in digital marketing and digital transformation, specialising in the practical application of AI to enhance communication strategies. The founder of Digital Training Institute, Joanne, empowers leaders and communications professionals to leverage AI responsibly and effectively, ensuring transparency, trust, and tangible results.
She completed the Harvard Kennedy School Executive Programme in AI and Public Policy this summer before launching her fourth book AI Playbook, in September. Joanne has also published two editions of Public Sector Marketing Pro, which were preceded by her first title, Social Media Under Investigation Law Enforcement and the Social Web.
Her books have become go-to resources for governments, public sector and policing agencies, as well as marketing and communications professionals, all navigating the challenges of the changing Internet.
Joanne is the host of the AI SIX Podcast, a daily six-minute podcast that provides actionable insights, expert interviews, and practical advice to help professionals navigate the new world of work.
