Audible now hosts a staggering 40,000 audiobook titles that have been narrated by artificial AI-generated voice, Bloomberg reported. This has been made possible thanks to a new tool that Amazon introduced last year. The free tool which is still in beta testing is accessible to self-published authors associated with the Kindle Store and allows them to convert their books into audiobooks easily.
That the tool is highly effective is amply clear given how the authors were able to churn out this many audiobooks during the months it has been made available. The same would have taken much longer had it been made using conventional methods using real human voice narrators. Apart from time, there is a lot of money to be saved with the AI virtual voice tool. That makes a win-win situation for the authors but what about the listers?
It is here that such audiobooks seem to hit a discordant note, what with many complaining they aren’t able to sort out the AI-generated audiobooks from the traditional ones. The best that they have is that the AI-generated titles are marked as such. Many also expressed concerns such a trend would mean a loss of livelihood for the voice narrators in the long run. Harper Collins recently announced a tie-up with ElevenLabs for creating audiobooks using AI voice even though it stated this isn’t going to be the norm in the future for all its audiobook ventures.
Audible, on its part, stated they take cognizance of the customer feedback which forms the basis of their efforts to make the service better suited to the listeners. The company however pointed out such AI-voiced audiobooks have an average overall 4+ rating, which points to the wider acceptance of such tools for creating audiobooks. This can also be seen as an approval of sorts for Amazon’s initiatives on this front along with perhaps an indication of what lies ahead in this segment. Stay tuned.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
