AI for Audiobooks
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AI for audiobooks works really well. It’s not perfect, but it works. Authors and publishers are now routinely using AI tools in audiobook production, primarily for books where full-scale narrator-focused audiobook production is not financially feasible. And not only for English-language audiobooks, but also audiobooks in translation. |
Using AI for audiobooks is not new; I first reported on the trend in Publishers Weekly in 2021. But the newer large language models have reinvigorated the technology for automated audiobook narration.
Back in 2021 I noted “Is it perfect? Certainly not. Can it be good enough? Probably, if a publisher is willing to spend the necessary time in the voice editing phase of the project.” Two-and-a-half years later, by many accounts, AI-voices are undetectable from human voices, unless you’re listening very closely.
Last November Meta (Facebook) introduced “Seamless,” which is able to “transfer tones, emotional expression, and vocal style qualities” into the translation of 200 languages. An audiobook can be immediately translated into multiple languages with extraordinary quality.
Also in 2021 I reported that “Audible’s block on the distribution of audiobooks with non-human narrators is a real problem that may take some time to resolve.” In the meantime, both Google and Apple announced programs to allow authors to create audiobooks with AI-generated voices. On December 5, Findaway Voices by Spotify began accepting “digital voice narrated audiobooks from Google Play Books for distribution to select retail partners.”
In early November 2023 Amazon announced that Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) authors would soon have access to a service that would allow them to “quickly and easily produce an audiobook version of their ebook using virtual voice narration, a synthetic speech technology.” In January, 2024, Jane Friedman reported (paywall) “Audible quietly started allowing AI-narrated audiobooks to enter its storefront late last fall, long after other retailers had done the same.”
And, of course, I’m using AI for the audiobook versions of this book.