What’s the end goal in an audiobook’s narration, anyway? Is it the simple transfer of information, plot device, and spoken words, like copying bytes in a file from one folder to another? Or is it about nuance and emotion?
Put me in the category of the latter. And so I had mixed feelings when I read that Amazon is launching AI narration for audiobooks on its audiobook and podcast platform, Audible. Publishers will be able to choose from more than 100 AI-generated voices to speak their books’ pages aloud.
How many more, Amazon doesn’t specify.
the end game
Sometime “in the coming months,” as Amazon vaguely puts it, publishers will be offered two options of AI narration for their audiobooks: an Audible-managed, end-to-end production from the initial “text ingestion” to the published audiobook, or a self-service production, whereby the publisher gets access to the same technology but moves along the process at their own pace.
Audible’s CEO, Bob Carrigan, said the end goal is to offer every book in every language through its own “fully integrated, end-to-end AI production technology,” according to a statement released by Amazon announcing the news.
For now, “more than” 100 AI voices are offered only in English, Spanish, French, and Italian, with a variety of accents and dialects. Later in the year, Amazon will begin beta testing AI translation for audiobooks among customers. “We’re developing support for translations from English to Spanish, French, Italian, and German, which we’ll begin to roll out throughout this year,” Amazon reports.
Publishers will be able to choose to have professional, human linguists to check the AI-produced translations for accuracy and cultural nuance. It’s wild to me that these days, we have to specify “human” when talking about some tasks that were, until very recently, inherently human.
Two styles of translation will be offered: “Text-to-text translation for manuscripts, after which publishers can select either professional or AI narration, and speech-to-speech translation that preserves original narrators’ voice and style across languages.”
There isn’t any indication in Amazon’s press release that the AI voices will replace human narrators. That, at least, is a relief.
The post Amazon Audible Is Going To Use AI Voices to Narrate Audiobooks appeared first on VICE.
