Apple’s digital storytelling lets an AI voice read you a book

[ad_1]

If you’re an Apple Books lover, there’s a new feature that may interest or horrify you: Apple has announced the launch of a new digital storytelling project to create audiobooks using artificial intelligence. Because the audiobook market is exploding in popularity, yet only a fraction of books are actually converted into audio, Apple’s new technology offers a way to remove the “cost and complexity” associated with creating recordings of human voices.

The first publicly available results of the project are already on the Apple Book Store. If you open the Books app and search for “AI Narration,” you’ll find several dozen fiction and romance titles labeled “Narrated by Apple Books.” Tap that label, and you’ll be notified whether the book will be read to you by “Madison,” the digital soprano used for these genres, or “Jackson,” the baritone equivalent. Both are said to be based on a real human narrator, but the audio was generated using artificial intelligence.

On Apple’s website, you can also hear samples of “Helena” and “Mitchell,” which are the digital entries for the nonfiction and self-development genres, but these haven’t yet been used for any publicly available audiobooks.

Apple assures us that the voices are the result of “advanced text-to-speech technology with extensive work by teams of linguists, quality control specialists and audio engineers”, but it is clear that the most interesting quality of Madison and Jackson is their efficiency. Recording a human narrative takes weeks, potentially costs thousands of dollars, and requires the presence of an experienced voice actor or celebrity (or, increasingly, the author), which is why so many books remain text-only. The AI ​​approach greatly increases the cost-effectiveness of the process.

But is it actually effective? I listened to the first few pages of Kristen Ethridge’s Shelter From The Storm and was struck by how inhuman it sounded. “Madison” doesn’t quite sound like a person, and she can’t convincingly fit her speech patterns to the content of the text. Also, there isn’t the intangible human emotional quality that helps the listener stay engaged. I was constantly moving away, filtering the sound as background noise.

The technology is undoubtedly improving and may be able to replace human voice actors within a few years, but it’s not there yet. It’s clear that automating the storytelling process will save a lot of money in the long queue of rapidly produced, low-reader books, but it’s also obvious why Apple is wary of implementing this system for high-end titles. more high-profile and highlighting movement in general. As far as we know, there hasn’t been a standard press release for the project, and Apple appears to be targeting its publicity at authors and publishers more than media sites or the general public.

And those authors may not be so keen on the idea. As the Guardian notes, it’s a strategy that faces criticism from many stakeholders other than readers. An audiobook producer and a literary agent contacted by the paper each spoke of the value provided by high-quality storytelling and expressed some skepticism about the project, but more serious reservations may come from political or legal entities. With this new service, Apple appears to be moving into creating rather than simply selling audiobooks, which will open a new front for allegations of anti-competitive behavior.

[ad_2]