Audiobooks being narrated by an artificial voice or artificial intelligence (AI) has been a hot button topic in the audiobook industry from many years. We attended the Audiobook Publishers Association’s annual conference back in May 2017 in New York City and it was being heavily discussed then. They were referring to it as Text-to-Speech Technology at the time, but the acronym AI (Artaficial Intelegnce) has taken over today’s terminology. The issues with “Text-to-Speech” technology back in 2017 was the lack of rhythm, style, and emotion. The synthesized voices also did not sound very lifelike. Those issues have come a long way since 2017 and combined with today’s AI ability to learn, they are less of an issue today.
Issues with AI-Narrated Audiobooks:
- Lack of rhythm, style, and emotion in voice
- Unlifelike sound of synthesized voices
- Takes jobs away from human narrators
Human narration is considered an art, with many of today’s top narrators taking decades to refine their craft. Digital narration may have its place with manuals and self published authors, but major publishing houses say audiobooks must be narrated by a human. Why would AI narration even be considered you ask, money. The average audiobook takes about one week to narrate, AI narrations take a fraction of that time. So how long will it take before publishing houses realize the economic benefits of AI?
Today, they are cloning the voice of professional narrators who license the rights to their voice. This makes a digitally narrated audiobook sound more lifelike but has many narrators alarmed at what it could mean for their industry. Weather you agree or disagree with AI narrated audioboks, it’s clear the technology is here to stay, and more and more audiobooks will be digitally narrated in the future. The big question is, will the public accept AI-narrated literature? only time will tell.
