I can get that for free. There are apps that will read an ebook to you already. The whole point of paying the premium on audible is the superior reading/acting. Not put up with mispronounced words, weird cadence and an inability to handle acronyms
Audible unveils plans to use AI voices to narrate audiobooks
Submitted 3 weeks ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
ExtantHuman@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
ApatheticCactus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ve tried one that works surprisingly well. Each sentence had great pacing, cadence, and correct enunciation- even had tone right when someone was shouting or angry or sad.
I wouldn’t really recommend it, though. While I couldn’t pick any single thing out that was wrong, overall it just didn’t quite flow. It’s like watching someone try to act that is technically doing everything right, but it just isn’t good. It basically didn’t understand the greater context of the story and was saying lines.
It was uncanny valley, but exclusively with voice.
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I thought people mainly paid for the large library
Litebit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Is there an offline tool that generates realistic audio for epubs as Mp3 ? Something like the free Ai tool, Vibe which is for transcription. Is there something similar for TTS, runs locally without complicated setup using python and etc.
ExtantHuman@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I’ve loaded epubs into the app ReadEra, which lets you read it like any other novel app or will, in real time, read it to you. It’s not the most natural of speech, but was good enough for my commute when I was in the midst of a compelling book.
aceshigh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Great question! I need to come back to this thread to see if something is suggested.
Mbourgon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Looking for iOS recommendations, preferably without a subscription that can read epub/pdf
ExtantHuman@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I’m an android user, so not sure if it’s on iOS but I’ve used ReadEra
Big_Boss_77@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
This is dumb as hell… if I wanted AI to read a book poorly to me, I’d just use screen reading accessibility features.
Anamnesis@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Are there any good ones nowadays that don’t sound like a robot?
venusaur@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sure there are. ElevenLabs is one. You can probably tell they’re not human but they’re really decent.
thiseggowaffles@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Speechify is probably the best option.
knightly@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
No
Jhex@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
trained on stolen books? then I guess I can download these from anywhere I may find for free as well, right?
I3lackshirts94@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This has actually got me thinking differently about AI all together.
The best use for AI needs to be for the individual. I want MY ai to read books or research with or complete tasks for me.
I don’t want another company to do it for me or monetize it or steal content with it.
Venator@lemmy.nz 3 weeks ago
Yep, copyright doesn’t apply to AI generated content.
Threeme2189@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
How about I spin up an AI model that outputs a near 1:1 copy of the training data?
Does that circumvent the copyright?
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
AI voices are not trained on books.
The ethical issue there is more around cloning celebrities
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, yeah, you can. Whoever told you that you can’t, don’t believe them, they are probably being payed to say it. You could also pay for the book to support the author but most likely your money will not go to the author so don’t bother.
desmosthenes@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I like your way of thinking
Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
isn’t the current law not recognising AI stuff for copyright?
IE, downloading their audiobooks illegally is impossible are they are by default in the public domain.
ArtificialHoldings@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Hmmm, you might have a case but maybe not.
The US Copyright office currently does not recognize protections for AI-generated works, and for portions of complete works that are AI-generated. For example, if a comic has graphics generated by AI but a script written by people, the graphics and character likenesses, etc are not protected by copyright.
For audiobooks, the original work and the accompanying recording are both protected by copyright. The audiobook is considered a derivative work, so it may still be protected based on the fact that the original work is rightfully protected by copyright.
MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It was bound to happen. I’m okay with ones that were never going to be turned into audiobooks to begin with… but they likely will use that as the norm for all books… I guess unless the author/publisher says not to.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah currently contracts require the author’s or publisher’s consent. If anyone is a writer make sure to triple check your contracts for this shit.
Womble@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And unless your are Stephan King or the like exactly how are you going to get the publishing cartel (I think they re consolidated downs to 3-4 publishers now) to change their contract to not include this? Their response will almost certainly be either “that’s non-negotiable” or “ok then you get half as much money”.
Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I’ve listened to a couple audiobooks where the author did the voice and i liked them. They know how phrases need to sound like better then an AI i would assume.
Godnroc@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Fucking gross. Maybe it’s the 250+ audiobooks I have influencing me, but the very best ones I’ve listened to transcend just turning words into sound. Sound effects, music, tone, emotion, accents, sarcasm, and god damn BLOOPERS all improve the experience beyond just hearing what is written down.
I’m against it, fuck that literal noise.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Sound effects, music […] improve the experience
Actually hard disagreeing on that. I absolutely hate the audio drama versions of audio books and prefer the narrator only ones since they are much clearer and require a lot less focus to listen to and work in more contexts (background noise,…). Sound effects and music (while something is read, intro or outro style music is okay) distract from the actual content.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Usually I agree with this with the exception of hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy where the audio drama is much better than the audiobook version.
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
All I can think of is Jim Dale’s reading of the Harry Potter books. Fucking epic.
Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Also Andy Serkis reading the lord of the rings. 11/10
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
What, no way, they did not replace Steven Fry.
Nangijala@feddit.dk 3 weeks ago
I prefer listening to real people. No matter how good AI voices become, I still like knowing that the one reading the book to me understands what they are saying.
Valmond@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT. ROBOTS CAN SHOW EMOTION.
lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
AS A FELLOW HUMAN I APPRECIATE YOUR INSIGHTFUL FEELINGS
But_my_mom_says_im_cool@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The issue is there’s a million books out there with no audio and never will. Im ok with Ai doing readings on books that wouldn’t otherwise get an audio version
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
With machine voice with no attempts at imitate human’s intonation - yes.
joel_feila@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yeah i can see worls of non fiction being a good candidate.
Nangijala@feddit.dk 3 weeks ago
Sure, but it is still lame for a company like Audible to expect people to pay for their service and then they decide to cut costs by switching to AI voices. They can afford to hire actors to read their books. They have no excuse to go do that.
Meanwhile what you’re talking about if books and stories that may not get to be picked to be narrated and well, I can see where ai voices could be a benefit in those cases. Especially for people with dyslexia.
I just disagree with a company that sells itself on narrated books and then they go and have robots read their shit? Why should anyone pay for that? Because I’m sure their prices wouldn’t go down either.
And when all is said and done, personally, I just prefer that a human being is reading to me. Especially if it is fiction.
Fenrisulfir@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I watch those movie recaps from YouTube while I work. The AI was obviously talking about a nine one one call but called it a nine hundred and eleven. Or when it’s talking about nine eleven. It instantly snaps you out of it. It’s sorta funny as background noise but I would 100% be avoiding it as a purchase.
essteeyou@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I completely agree. I don’t even like it when the human reader clearly doesn’t understand what they’re saying, so some AI flatly telling me the story isn’t going to cut it.
For the humans, someone mispronounced “quay” for example. “La Jolla” was another standout mistake that took me out of the story.
Nangijala@feddit.dk 3 weeks ago
Dude, I know how you feel xD back in 2009 I bought an audio recording of the first Twilight book because I was curious about ehat the fuss was about. It was in Danish, as I am Danish, and the narrator, bless her, had a very Danish way of pronouncing the word “flirting”. In Danish we don’t have a modern word for flirting so we just use the English one with English pronunciation, but this lady, who already sounded like she was in her 60s, just went full Dane on that word and it completely took me out of the story and had me yell at my ghettoblaster “FLIRTING” everytime she pronounced her mutilated version of that word. I don’t even know how to write a phonetic version of what the fuck she said, but I’ll try.
Fleert-eh
Fuck me, it’s been almost 16 years and just spelling it out made my skin crawl.
I also hated that book, but that wasn’t really the narrator’s fault. Had to pause the fuck out of it several times and rage clean my apartment. Nobody had told me about how it romanticized abusive relationships and I had JUST gotten out of one of those so to say I was triggered was an understatement. The mispronounciations of flirting were just the garnish on top, lol.
DeceasedPassenger@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Meanwhile I unveil a plan to continue not giving a goddamn cent to J Bozo. Ever.
utopiah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s Amazon, what did you expect? Enshittification and monopoly abuse, no surprise.
Evotech@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Idk, they have pretty good stats that nobody will listen to an audio book if they don’t like the narrator, so being able to choose your own narrator on the fly isn’t really shitty
utopiah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Enshittification isn’t adding new features that people want, it’s gradually lowering the quality of the product. So here is Audible is solely adding more possibilities, never at the cost of higher quality ones degrading, then indeed I’m wrong.
If though they hire less people to do good voice acting, then it’s really shitty.
I genuinely hope I’m wrong and they are ONLY adding new capabilities… but my entire experience with capitalism is that obtaining a monopolistic position is not done to improve quality but rather to increase margins regardless of how.
We’ll see!
GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
tiktok voice:
hate. let me tell you how much i’ve come to hate you since i began to live. there are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex…
Anomalocaris@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
unironically, that is a character that could use an uncanny robotic AI voice.
Evotech@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The professional ai voices are amazing
rpl6475@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Surely I can just do that myself with an an epub and a free AI.
Glad I binned my Audible subscription many years ago.
drmoose@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This is clearly the future despite the outrage here.
There are at least 389 living languages with over 1M speakers. That alone means it’s impossible to reach some people and they get left out. Most of these languages dont even have enough professional voice actors to cover the bandwidth.
There are thousands of books released every year. That’s impossible to cover even in English alone.
Its an objective net good to have more accessible audio books and the privileged people who do care about this stuff can very much afford to vote with their wallets for non-ai voices.
riskable@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
I just wrote a novel (finished first draft yesterday). There’s no way I can afford professional audiobook voice actors—especially for a hobby project.
What I was planning on doing was handling the audiobook on my own—using an AI voice changer for all the different characters.
That’s where I think AI voices can shine: If someone can act they can use a voice changer to handle more characters and introduce a great variety of different styles of speech while retaining the careful pauses and dramatic elements (e.g. a voice cracking during an emotional scene) that you’d get from regular voice acting.
I’m not saying I will be able to pull that off but surely it will be better than just telling Amazon’s AI, “Hey, go read my book.”
Ledericas@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
youtube already does it.
flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I listened to one recently that was using AI. It was kind of off putting because of how robotic it came off.
It wasn’t the tone really, but I find that AI tends to not get human speech inflections during active speech. And that can be jarring toe at least.
Maxxie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I hate so much that this has a 100% chance of happening. Narrator can make a mediocre book shine, or make a good book into a fucking rollercoaster (Andy Serki’s anyone).
AI is not a great narrator. Its character voices are boring, intonations weird, pacing awful. Why would anyone listen to a much worse version of what they could have with a human? I’d rather get amateur narrating it over an autocomplete trying to sound like Morgan Freeman.
selkiesidhe@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I am okay with this only in cases where 1) the author approves, and 2) there is no audible version anyways.
Some people prefer listening to their books instead of reading and that’s totally ok. Indie authors can’t always afford to hire a narrator but I’d still want the buyers to be able to listen to the book.
Big question is, will the author get paid for the download or not…
FancyPantsFIRE@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
For now at least I bet this’ll be pretty mediocre. I’m a big audiobook fan and voice actors have a massive impact on the quality of the finished product. A great voice actor can make a mediocre book fun and engaging, a bad one can make a great book unlistenable. The best do great voice differentiation. As an example I’ve really enjoyed Andrea Parsneau’s work in The Wandering Inn series.
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Is voice AI trained on stolen data? I was under the impression that was LLMs.
JigglySackles@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well that’s a great way to keep me unsubscribed. Glad I canceled my membership.
Kookie215@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
AI will write them and AI will read them to us.
ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Left Amazon a handful of years ago. Glad I didn’t entirely contribute to this. Saw that coming….
Ilixtze@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I will Avoid Audio books with AI voices. I prefer the warmth of a human voice instead. A lot of my favorite Audiobooks are elevated by the interpretation of the professional actor.
MiyamotoKnows@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
This consumer says you don’t get a red cent then!
It’s already a plague on youtube where half of the docu style vids are AI narrated already. I quit them in disgust. It’s so frustrating. It has eroded my perception of Youtube in short time.
tal@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
AI voice synth is pretty solid, and I think that there are good uses for it — e.g. filling in for an aging actor/actress who can’t do a voice any more, video game mods, procedurally-generated speech, etc — but audiobooks don’t really play to those strengths. I’m a little skeptical that in 2025, it’s at the point where it’s a good drop-in replacement for audio books. What I’ve heard still doesn’t have emphasis on par with a human.
I don’t know what it costs to have a human read an audiobook, but I can’t imagine that it’s that expensive; I doubt that there’s all that much editing involved.
kagis
reddit.com/…/whats_the_average_narrator_cost/
So I produced my own audiobooks for my Nova Roma series so I know the exact numbers for you:
$250 per finished hour for the narrator. Books ranged from about 200k words-270k words, which came out to 22 hours, 20 hours, and 25 hours.
So books 1-3 cost me $5,500, $5,000, and $6,250. I’m contracted for two more books with my narrator, so I expect to spend another 5k-6k for each of those.
So for a five book series, each one 200k+ words, the total cost out of pocket for me will be about $27,000 give or take to make the series into audiobooks.
That’s actually lower than I expected, but point stands. Like, if a book sells at any kind of volume, it can’t be that hard to make that back.
Breezy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Why would they when you can just plug any epub into a program and use google tts. Ive listened to about a book a day for the past few years doing this and i love it. Yeah it took getting used too, but once you find an ai voice you like and figure out which words to auto replace to sound right its honestly better then an audiobook. Well at least to me it is, i could never stand when the reader would change their voice for different characters.
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I only get the ones with a famous narrator or the author.
madjo@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Am I glad to have dropped everything Amazon.
I de-audibled my entire library, stored on Audiobookshelf and I’ll only buy audiobooks from libro.fm
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Oh, goody! I hope they use that TikTok lady’s voice! It’s my favorite!
unphazed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Save a profile in tts server, then go into read > tts settings and change voice to profile you saved. I don’t remember but you may need readera premium.
potoo22@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
No publisher is going to pay a professional to narrate their audiobooks when they can have AI do a shitty job for much less.
A shitty narrator can get me to hate a book I like. A great narrator can bring the characters to life, enhance the experience, and turn me from a listener to a fan. I’ve searched for books by narrators like Nick Podehl and Jeff Hayes and bought audiobooks I wouldn’t have otherwise.
monkeyman512@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That depends entirely on how profitable it is and how much they can get authors onboard.
I do agree that a good narrator delivers a performance that adds the work. James Marster will always be Harry Dresden in my head.
empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
A. Anything can be profitable when the cost to generation will be counted in singles of dollars instead of multiple thousands for a good narrator. They don’t even have to sell many to turn a profit too.
B. You think authors are going to have a choice? Lmfao. It’s the publishers that hold any real power and they will jump all over everyone’s IP with AI slop to make an extra three cents.
lemonskate@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I tried, and failed, to get into audio books for years. Then I listened to Dungeon Crawler Carl narrated by Jeff Hayes and what an absolute delight it was. There’s no way I would’ve gotten even 10 minutes in if it was one of those soulless AI voices instead.
tehn00bi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Currently listening to the first book.
brrt@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
And that is where I see potential for AI. There are quite a few books which I’d love to listen to but they are all narrated by a guy whose narration I can’t stand. AI would open the possibility to choose a voice and I might actually get to enjoy those books. It’s Amazon though so the ethical implications and quality concerns are something I’m worried about.
Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Did you ever heard a single AI-narrated content that did not make you run away screaming?
Uli@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I made some AI animated content that I never released because I don’t have the rights to the voices I was using. Even though I was blending several voices together to make them unrecognizable, it made me uncomfortable.
But in the process I learned the capabilities and limitations of AI voices. If you’re going purely from text to speech, it’s horrendous (as far as I experienced). Very robotic. It’s a bit better when melodic information is included (as in Suno) but still sounds like AI.
But when I recorded my own voice saying the lines and then converted it to another voice, it took all of the nuance of my line reads and converted it into the other voice.
So, would your opinion change if it turns out they’re going to use purchased voice rights to have a single narrator perform the whole book and then use AI to turn the narrators voice into a full voice cast?
I could see how it would allow lesser known books to have a better experience with a truly separate voice for each character, but I could also see how this might drive out lesser known/minority voice actors. Not advocating one way or another, just providing a piece of this conversation I think we should bear in mind.
Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Using different voices to read different parts of a book turns an audiobook into a bad audio play, and arguably, a bad audio play is worse than a mediocre audio book.
What audible misses is, that, while reading is a technique that can be automated, narrating is an art. They can use AI to read books, they cannot use AI to narrate books.
Your example of AI use is a good example of this: AI can read your content. AI can enhance your capabilities. But only you can narrate it.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
It would make me hate it even more because I already hate the existing full cast of humans audio dramas 99% of the time and actually prefer a single (or low number of) narrator approach.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Oh. That’s an interesting use-case I hadn’t considered.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Honestly audible are terribles. They are constantly doing things that annoy me, like they must have a team somewhere that spends its days going, how can we kill this golden goose?
They are going through and replacing audiobooks recorded in the 1980s with new ones which in theory should improve their quality but they’re getting rid of the classic sounds of those books.
futatorius@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I wouldn’t put it past Bezos to have an actual enshittification department.
48954246@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Nick Podehl is such an amazing narrator. The voices and performance are amazing.
I’ve been slowly getting through the Kel Kade books and the narration just makes it for me
Kusimulkku@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I’m not sure why AI would automatically mean it’s doing a shitty job.
utopiah@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Because… the tool has no understanding of anything? It reads written words, yes, but no intention, no cultural context, no intonation. Unless everything is spelled out like a script, then it will not sound great, would it?
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The thing with this is that there won’t be shitty narrations any more. Hate it all you may, fact of the matter is that AI-powered voice generation is pretty good at what it does. So in the future you won’t have shitty narrations and great narrations. You’ll have decent narrations and great (human) narrations.
ExperiencedWinter@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And teslas will have full self driving tomorrow and crypto currency will replace normal currency within one year! Always believe in the hype!
catloaf@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
For fiction, yeah, that’s true. For nonfiction, this could work pretty well.
I’m still generally opposed to it because it’s using the work of existing voice recording without compensation, though.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Only in rare cases.
If you have for example some explanations to a complex topic, then a super emotionless voice would still make you hate it and block you from learning it. Even the most dry and hard topics need some good and alive voice in explanations.
If it is just some reference list, where you need to search and hear small parts of it, then it could be Ok.