this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Why isn't everyone talking about AI generated audiobooks? (reddthat.com)
submitted 1 year ago by PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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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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[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Because it has the potential to become actively harmful to the audiobook industry

[–] Akrenion@programming.dev 7 points 1 year ago

And great for accesibility for people who can not read well.

[–] Gold_E_Lox@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Because they are people. There are other options, you don’t have to support Amazon.

[–] PlasterAnalyst@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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_stole_ur_taco@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] crank@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago

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.

Some further context about Audible: