If you’re a fan of audiobooks, Apple just gave you a taste of the future by releasing its first batch of AI-narrated books. But while this is a great move with major ramifications, the robotic undertones of the narrators show that the lovable human voices will be around for some time yet.
You can find AI-enabled audiobooks that use text-to-speech translation in the Apple Books app by searching for “AI narration.” This displays a list of romance or fantasy books (both free and paid) that come with the description “Narrated by Apple Books.”
Apple Books offers two types of AI voice — a soprano called Madison and a baritone voice called Jackson — both of which have an American accent and currently only speak English. You can get a sense of what it’s like by clicking the “Preview” button below an Apple Book title.
At the moment, there is undoubtedly a synthetic, robotic quality to each of Apple’s AI voices. You won’t mistake them for the warm, expressive tones of famous narrators like Stephen Fry or Julia Whelan anytime soon. But while the uncanny valley remains a difficult hurdle for AI narrators to cross, they are undoubtedly on a fast road to our ears.
Apple says of course (Opens in a new tab) Its AI voices were developed to make audiobooks “more accessible to everyone”. But they also make the multi-billion dollar audiobook industry within reach of the tech giant. And the new Apple Books feature is just the beginning of a fierce battle with the likes of Amazon and Spotify for our audiobook-loving ears.
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For now, we’ll mostly see AI narrators restricted to books from smaller independent publishers. This could lead to an explosion in the number of audiobooks available to readers on all devices, as digital narratives open up a new market for publishers and authors who previously could not afford the jump from print to audio.
But opposition from major publishers and voice actors may also slow the rise of robotic narrators. Amazon’s Kindle e-readers officially lost their text-to-speech powers several years ago, even if there were workarounds in the accessibility menus. This decision was at least in part due to copyright issues and audiobooks being legally distinct pieces of art.
Amazon-owned Audible has also written at length (Opens in a new tab) About which narrators fit different types of books and how publishers choose the right books. Her blog says that “the most important aspect when it comes to audiobooks is that the audio matches the tone and genre of the book”. This is somewhat difficult to achieve if you only have two audios, like Apple Books.
Audible also says that “experienced voice actors are able to quite easily distinguish vocal characteristics by playing with pitch, intonation, volume, and accents,” and this is certainly where AI voice actors need to do some extensive vocal training, and perhaps take some Night lessons in emotional reflection.
But it’s clear that the new Apple Books feature is just the beginning of the inevitable boom in AI voice technology. And the really big moment for audiobooks may be when, instead of automatically reading a text, an AI can convincingly impersonate a famous voice actor — a leap that may not be too far, based on recent offerings from the likes of Amazon.
fake Empire
After all, deepfakes aren’t limited to eerily disguised videos of synthetic Morgan Freeman (Opens in a new tab) Or Tom Cruise (Opens in a new tab) – AI voice technology is also developing rapidly.
Viral web applications such as Uberduck (Opens in a new tab) It allows you to generate speech with the voices of former presidents or cartoon characters, while Amazon offered it last year (Opens in a new tab) Alexa’s terrifying new skill can read The Wizard of Oz to a child with her grandmother’s voice.
With the likes of Google Wavenet (Opens in a new tab) In addition to driving technology forward, AI voices will become more compelling. Right now, the barriers to widespread adoption of audiobooks are more likely to be legal and ethical, rather than technical. But Apple Books’ artificial narrators are the artificial voice of our future — and in the not-too-distant future, it’s likely that famous audio narrators will copyright and license their voices, too.
For now, the evidence in Apple Books suggests that these AI voices are currently best suited for works of nonfiction and nonfiction, rather than emotional storytelling. For the novels, just like the movies, we are still so far from phony actors being able to convincingly tug our heart strings without ruining the suspense with a robotic effect or a flat note. But an avalanche of AI audiobooks is definitely coming, regardless.