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What just happened? Audible is ramping up its use of artificial intelligence for audiobook narration but is taking an inclusive approach by involving human narrators in the process. The Amazon-owned company announced this week that it will invite select US-based audiobook professionals to train AI models using their voices.
The resulting AI “voice clones” can then be used to quickly produce new audiobook recordings, with human narrators still involved to oversee quality control.
Audible has been working on AI-narrated audiobooks for some time. Last year, the company introduced AI-generated “virtual voices” to narrate ebooks from self-published authors on Amazon’s Kindle platform. That initiative has already resulted in over 40,000 AI-narrated audiobooks as of May.
Instead of relying solely on generic synthetic voices, Audible now aims to enhance quality by training voice models on real professional narrators. This human element could make AI narrations sound more natural.
Participating narrators will provide a voice sample, which Audible’s systems can then use to create an AI replica. When a book needs narrating, the narrator can “audition” their AI clone for the job, similar to applying for any other gig. If selected, they’ll use Audible’s tools to edit the AI narration for issues such as mispronunciations and awkward pacing.
Narrators will be paid for any audiobooks produced using their AI voice clones, just as they would be for traditional narration work. Payments will follow a royalty-sharing model based on each book’s sales. Audible states that this approach will allow narrators to “expand their production capabilities” and “increase their earning potential” by handling more projects simultaneously.
As with other companies introducing generative AI features, Audible emphasizes that AI narrations are intended to supplement, not replace, human narrators. It also assures that a narrator’s voice replica will not be used without their explicit approval for each specific title. Narrators will maintain full control throughout the production process.
The goal is to increase the relatively small percentage of ebooks that currently have audiobook versions. As of last year, Audible reports that 96 percent of self-published Kindle titles still lack an audio companion. With AI narration tools becoming more accessible, this percentage could soon decrease rapidly.
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