The way we consume literature has constantly been evolving over the centuries, from manuscripts to Gutenberg’s printing press to digital ebooks and audiobooks we have today. With the recent advances in artificial intelligence, AI technology can be the next great revolution in reading. Thanks to AI, reading is becoming a whole new experience, with new interactive and personalized elements.
Is AI changing how we read books?
The potential uses for AI are limitless. From elaborate systems that predict user behavior and adjust content based on personal preferences, to advanced speech recognition algorithms that help create lifelike AI voiceovers. You can even try some of this technology yourself – CapCut offers a range of powerful AI features for content creators, including a free text-to-speech converter that can generate realistic-sounding lines from any text.
AI is also changing the way we read books. The ability to learn and react to user input in real-time means we could soon be reading interactive ebooks that adapt as you read them, creating a unique story for every reader. If the reader is struggling, the AI can even generate simple explanations of concepts within the book and additional helpful commentary that could help comprehend the story better.
Imagine a thriller where the storyline changes based on your previous reading choices, creating re-readability that wasn’t possible using traditional means. With this technology, books can become more like video games, where every choice matters, and you can craft your own story as you go.
Enhancing audiobooks with AI
Audiobooks traditionally required a human narrator to create the voiceover, but with the use of AI, that is no longer a necessity. AI-created audiobooks can offer realistic and natural-sounding voices with dynamic modulations that can adapt the tone to preset settings, or even adapt itself to fit the current events of the story. It can also easily create different voices for different characters, without having to hire multiple actors to get the job done.
Just like ebooks, audiobooks could also become an interactive experience with the use of AI. Future audiobooks could potentially ask the listener questions about the plot, adjusting the course of action of the story, or even create new alternate endings based on the listener’s choices. AI can also dynamically change the text for increased accessibility, creating more descriptive narration or real-time sign language transcription for those hard of hearing.
An evolution in education: AI use in textbooks
Artificial intelligence use isn’t limited to creative literature only – it also finds many applications for texts that are scientific in nature, like textbooks and essays. Students can interact with digital textbooks that can provide instant feedback on reader’s comprehension, performing quizzes from time to time and adjusting the content based on the student’s performance.
Textbook AI could also offer supplementary resources that would be useful for the text you’re currently reading, and even answer questions you might have regarding the material you are studying. With AI, textbooks can also offer a built-in voice assistant that can provide additional context or a brief recap if you’ve been away from your book for a while.
AI technology is truly groundbreaking, revolutionizing practically all industries, from healthcare to public transportation. While book readers can enjoy AI-powered features like text-to-speech and dynamic story changes, graphic designers can automatically edit their photos and videos – even coloring pictures with the use of AI thanks to free editing apps like CapCut.
AI-powered language translation
One of the major barriers in reading literature has always been the language. There are plenty of books, essays, research papers, and other literary works that haven’t been translated to other languages. With AI, real-time translation is simple and accurate. Readers can instantly translate an entire book into their language of choice, making literature more accessible than ever before.
Unlike traditional translation methods, AI-powered translation makes use of deep learning algorithms that are trained on massive datasets of text in many languages, allowing them to predict the probability of a sequence of words in the target language. These systems can better understand context, avoiding errors in translation that traditional systems were vulnerable to because they often translated sentences in isolation.
Conclusion: what is the future of reading?
The future of reading may be shaped by AI, and we need to get comfortable with that thought. The technology is extremely promising and provides powerful improvements, but also threatens the very definition of what we consider a “book”. Can the interactive and personalized AI creations that adapt to each reader specifically be still called books?
Nonetheless, the implementation of AI in literature seems unavoidable. Will this make reading more enjoyable and accessible, empowering the author’s creativity, or will it replace human writers as a whole? Time will only tell – but for now, we can be cautiously optimistic.
Markus lives in San Francisco, California and is the video game and audio expert on Good e-Reader! He has a huge interest in new e-readers and tablets, and gaming.
