In the ebook site Project Gutenberg, the readers can explore 5,000 open-license audiobooks. This is an initiative by Project Gutenberg, Microsoft, Google, and MIT.
The project has approximately 35,000 hours of audio generated by AI, which sounds next to the human voice. You can listen to works of Edgar Allan Poe, Frankenstein, or Shakespeare’s Macbeth with its mysterious witches. This collection has something for everyone, as the audiobooks range from fiction to nonfiction.
The researchers wrote in a pre-print paper at arXiv.org:
“We hope this contribution can provide value to both the research community and the broader community of audiobook listeners. Large-Scale Automatic Audiobook Creation” argues that audiobooks “can dramatically improve a work of literature’s accessibility.”
The audiobook revolution is at an all-time high. There are so many projects, updates, and offers. Like, Spotify is giving away free audiobooks to paid subscribers.
The Project executive director, Greg Newby, said that:
“Reactions have generally been positive. Audiobooks are quite popular, even our older ones from 2004 that have relatively low quality. People appreciate having a variety of literary works available as audiobooks. Of course, many new audiobooks that Microsoft made from Project Gutenberg texts were not otherwise available as audiobooks — they are not popular enough for major platforms.”
How Will it Work?
The audiobooks are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and the Internet Archive. You can listen to our favorite books, and the project aims to add even more books.
However, many people comment on artificial touch. The AI model needs to learn how to differentiate between Roman symbols. Also, the voices of all the characters are the same. But the human voice is nice. It saves the time to print the books and makes the reading accessible.
What in the Future?
The project aims to target free audiobooks for all 60,000 ebooks on Project Gutenberg. Also, it can be translated into different languages. There can also be custom audiobooks, where people read aloud in their voice, using only a few seconds of example sound. But one of the most incredible features is that its work is all open sources. The code is available on Microsoft’s Synapse ML site.
The ability to listen to free audiobooks, customize, and contribute to a Gutenberg project is a great Halloween gift for global readers. There is a lot of progress in this field, like Audible launching a new wear OS App to bring audiobooks to your wrists. All these technological advances are great for the reader.
Let us know what your thoughts are on Project Gutenberg and your expectations.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.
