Why isn't everyone talking about AI generated audiobooks?
Why isn't everyone talking about AI generated audiobooks?
I just listened to this AI generated audiobook and if it didn't say it was AI, I'd have thought it was human-made. It has different voices, dramatization, sound effects... The last I'd heard about this tech was a post saying Stephen Fry's voice was stolen and replicated by AI. But since then, nothing, even though it's clearly advanced incredibly fast. You'd expect more buzz for something that went from detectable as AI to indistinguishable from humans so quickly. How is it that no one is talking about AI generated audiobooks and their rapid improvement? This seems like a huge deal to me.
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Because it has the potential to become actively harmful to the audiobook industry
And great for accesibility for people who can not read well.
A lot of audiobook voices are harmful to the industry. Plenty of times I've listened to a book for ten minutes and said nevermind because the voice actor was terrible, making wet mouth sounds or their voice was just annoying or the audio quality was terrible.
I love the multi book series where they hire a different narrator for certain books and they end up pronouncing names and places differently than the first narrator.
why should i care about the audio book industry? The biggest player is Amazon, it doesn't add value to the art form, its just another way to become informed, and the more people who have that ability the better.
Because they are people. There are other options, you don’t have to support Amazon.
I think it is true because if they get the tech right the market could be saturated and voice actors will be in lower demand.
And the situation is already terrible for these workers. >90% of people buy and consume books via Audible which is owned by Amazon. As I'm sure you can guess there is lots of shady stuff going on. Such as (but not limited to) the "Audiblegate" campaign where workers discovered Amazon was engaging massive systemic wagetheft. As situation which is still ongoing to the best of my knowledge.
- Audiblegate - main website for "audiblegate" campaign
- Audiblegate Campaign: Fair Deal for Rights Holders - The Alliance of Independent Authors
- #Audiblegate: ALLi Campaign Update — Self-Publishing Advice Center from the Alliance of Independent Authors
- The Truth Behind Audible Subscription Earnings (2023) - this page has detailed information including correspondence, spreadsheets etc if anyone really wants to dive in - however it appears to have been republished from another source which I can't identify
Some further context about Audible:
- Cory Doctorow is a Bestselling Author, but Audible Won't Carry his Audiobooks - talking about the tech side, DRM and so-called Intellectual property