40,000 AI-narrated audiobooks flood Audible, dividing authors and listeners

zohaibahd

zohaibahd

Posts: 88   +1
Staff
Cutting corners: A new breed of audiobook is taking over digital bookshelves – ones narrated not by professional voice actors, but by artificial intelligence voices. It's an AI audiobook revolution that has been turbo-charged by Amazon.

Since announcing a beta tool last year allowing self-published authors to generate AI "virtual voice" narrations for their ebooks, over 40,000 AI-narrated titles have flooded onto Audible, Amazon's audiobook platform. The eye-popping stat, revealed in a recent Bloomberg report, has many authors celebrating but is also raising red flags for human narrators.

For indie writers wanting to crack the lucrative audiobook market without paying hefty professional voiceover fees, Amazon's free virtual narration tool is a game-changer. One blogger cited in the report claimed converting an ebook to audio using the AI narration took just 52 minutes, bypassing the expensive studio recording route.

Others have mixed reactions. Last month, an author named George Steffanos launched an audiobook version of his existing book, posting that while he prefers human-generated works to those generated by AI, "the modest sales of my work were never going to support paying anyone for all those hours of narration."

But not everyone is giving the virtual voice glowing reviews. While the AI audiobooks are clearly labeled as such, some listeners have complained there's no option to filter them out when browsing Audible's catalog.

Human narrators are also sounding the alarm about potential job losses as the technology improves. "[It's] not taken all the jobs. But it's trying to," narrator Ramon de Ocampo ominously warned on social media about Amazon's virtual voice threat.

Major publishers like HarperCollins have already inked deals with AI voice companies to produce audiobooks across languages using the tech. Even Apple started selling audiobooks with AI-based narration last year with voices seemingly based on real actors' performances. Controversy erupted when those actors said they didn't know about it.

The tensions at play highlight the differing priorities and tradeoffs facing each group. For budget-constrained indie authors, easy and free audio conversions are a no-brainer. But for listeners accustomed to human narration quality, having no filter option is frustrating. Meanwhile, publishers want to embrace cost-saving tech without alienating consumers. But narrators fear having careers undermined.

As this AI-voiced audiobook tidal wave keeps growing on Audible, all sides are being forced to grapple with balancing creative integrity against commercial incentives.

Masthead credit: Distingué CiDDiQi

Permalink to story:

40,000 AI-narrated audiobooks flood Audible, dividing authors and listeners

 
VaRmeNsI said:
Given that most actors are lefties this couldn't come sooner.
Click to expand...
Why? So fascists can rule the book world? We should get a great book burning ready I suppose?

Seriously though, I find most human narrators on audio books to be of dubious quality - I’d wager an AI would probably be of equal quality most of the time… give the tech a few more years to mature and they’ll probably surpass all but the very best of human narrators - and at a fraction of the price.
 
  • Like
Reactions: pcnthuziast, Timbo64 and Godel
I've heard good and bad narration from humans. The worst though narrators tend to be the authors themselves. The AI versions tend to sound OK for a short while but then the lack of emphasis just kills it for me in the end. It's still a million times better than the original voice-to-text on the early Kindles. I recently tried listening to a human narrator reading the sci fi book MurderBot - All systems red (it's a brilliant and very funny book if you're into that kind of thing) but the excessively camp reading style of the narrator did not fit with the material at all - at least the Kindle 2 voice-to-text would of been more appropriate.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Timbo64
I'm an author and audiobook publisher. Audible is misguided in their belief that Virtual Voice is a good thing. They've actually shot themselves in the foot by permitting this flood of 40,000 AI books because, I'd suggest that at least 30,000 of those books would never have made it to audio because they did not sell as e-book or paperback. They do not have an audience and they will not sell as AI audiobooks with robot voices either. Audible has therefore created more costs for themselves as their servers now host 40,000 Virtual Voice books that only 1% of their customer base is listening to. This seems like a terrible business decision to me. Their original business model is based on human narration - this is what has made Audible the biggest player in the audiobook industry. Listeners hate artificial voice, especially in the romance and thriller genres where the narrator's emotional response to the text is vital.

I will never listen to a Virtual Voice audiobook because I love human narration and support authors who in turn support human narration. But it does irk me that Audible insists it cannot filter out Virtual Voice audiobooks from search results when they added an Erotica filter to the account settings tab and turned it on automatically for all users. They can filter out Virtual Voice but they're choosing not to because they've invested so much money in a product that customers DO NOT WANT, that they're trying to scrap a profit from where there's none to be had.
 
IsobelStarling said:
...At least 30,000 of those books would never have made it to audio because they did not sell as e-book or paperback. They do not have an audience and they will not sell as AI audiobooks with robot voices either.
Click to expand...
So why are you so concerned? If you don't like the product, don't buy it. That's how a free market works.

I'll also point out that the "robot voices" of today will soon be a thing of the past. If you listen to OpenAI's latest voice demos, they're literally indistinguishable from human narration ... emphasis included.

IsobelStarling said:
Listeners hate artificial voice, especially in the romance and thriller genres
Click to expand...
Listeners hate even more attempting to read a printed book while driving, because the book isn't available in audio form. There are millions of books with an audience far too small to justify paying a professional voice narrator to transcribe. AI will bring those books to market.
 
Endymio said:
So why are you so concerned? If you don't like the product, don't buy it. That's how a free market works.

I'll also point out that the "robot voices" of today will soon be a thing of the past. If you listen to OpenAI's latest voice demos, they're literally indistinguishable from human narration ... emphasis included.


Listeners hate even more attempting to read a printed book while driving, because the book isn't available in audio form. There are millions of books with an audience far too small to justify paying a professional voice narrator to transcribe. AI will bring those books to market.
Click to expand...

Endymio said:
So why are you so concerned? If you don't like the product, don't buy it. That's how a free market works.

I'll also point out that the "robot voices" of today will soon be a thing of the past. If you listen to OpenAI's latest voice demos, they're literally indistinguishable from human narration ... emphasis included.


Listeners hate even more attempting to read a printed book while driving, because the book isn't available in audio form. There are millions of books with an audience far too small to justify paying a professional voice narrator to transcribe. AI will bring those books to market.
Click to expand...
You asked why am I so concerned. Did you miss that I'm an author and I'm an audiobook producer? I run a small press and so its my business to keep ahead of what listeners want. I also care about my voice actor friends and I want them to keep their jobs. I know the listenership in the genres I work in. I refuse to go along with the attempts to normalize AI voice in audiobooks, especially as its a bargain basement product.

I have issues with the fact that with Audible, the biggest player, authors and small presses are not allowed to compete fairly in this so called 'free market' because we're not permitted to choose the price for our audiobooks - Audible sets the price and the rest of the industry prices their product based on Audible. However, authors who are in the Virtual Voice beta test are allowed to set the price for their audiobooks.

There have also been many Virtual Voice audiobooks that were original made with human narrators on a royalty share basis, that were then re-done with AI when this VV beta was launched. This cut off the narrator's income stream for that book and breached the contract. And no, they weren't shitty narrators. Its just that the authors in question decided to jump on a bandwagon and were clueless about breach of contract!

You clearly no nothing about the audiobook industry if you think that because AI voice 'improves', listeners will flock to listen. Human connection is a huge part of the fiction audiobook experience. Narrators have social media platforms and fanbases of listeners who will one-click on any book they narrate. Narrators attend conventions, sign books they narrated, do podcasts with authors, promote authors and fellow narrators. Its a community effort that you won't get with Voice A. No one is fangirling or fanboying over Voice A.. Voice A isn't attending a con, its not engaging in audiobook promotion. It is just a bit of soulless software, and that is exactly what listeners of fiction do not want. I find the whole thing of AI trying to take the job of creatives disgusting. We keep being told AI is to help humanity, but as far as I can see it's only helping lazy people, scammers and grifters.
 
IsobelStarling said:
You asked why am I so concerned. Did you miss that I'm an author and I'm an audiobook producer?... I also care about my voice actor friends and I want them to keep their jobs.
Click to expand...
Actually, I simply wished you to state explicitly what you just did. Your argument is nothing more than Luddite protectionism: indistinguishable from the 19th century hoodlums who burned factories and smashed weaving looms to "save the jobs" of those weaving cloth by hand. Thankfully, society ignored those philistines.

IsobelStarling said:
You clearly no nothing about the audiobook industry if you think that because AI voice 'improves', listeners will flock to listen.
Click to expand...
Appeal to authority fallacy noted. I ask again -- if you're so certain that no one will buy this product, why are you so concerned for the jobs of your "voice actor friends"?

Oops.
 
Endymio said:
Actually, I simply wished you to state explicitly what you just did. Your argument is nothing more than Luddite protectionism: indistinguishable from the 19th century hoodlums who burned factories and smashed weaving looms to "save the jobs" of those weaving cloth by hand. Thankfully, society ignored those philistines.


Appeal to authority fallacy noted. I ask again -- if you're so certain that no one will buy this product, why are you so concerned for the jobs of your "voice actor friends"?

Oops.
Click to expand...
Oh dear!

Smugness is really unbecoming! You're repeating the same tired, old misconceptions of tech bros everywhere. The Luddites were not against technology, they were against the factory owners who paid lower wages while they reaped ever higher profits. The message of the Luddites is quite simple: if new technologies erode wages and increase wealth inequality, it’s a result of a political choice by the owners of that technology, not a result of the inevitable and unstoppable march of progress.

There is no 'inevitable' rise of AI (or virtual voice audiobooks) especially when there is plenty of evidence that AI is a bubble. There is currently no path to profit from it, especially with datasets full of stolen art, writing, music and voice. And Audible is most certainly not profiting from their Virtual Voice beta test.

When it comes to AI audiobooks its the listeners who will decide if its a success or not, and in the 6 months since Virtual Voice books have been on sale the only thing they've achieved is to flood the Audible website with **** and to make listeners end their Audible subscriptions in protest. It's a free market after all.
 
IsobelStarling said:
Smugness is really unbecoming! You're repeating the same tired, old misconceptions of tech bros everywhere. The Luddites were not against technology, they were against the factory owners who paid lower wages
Click to expand...
Oops! Facts matter:

From UK Historic Society:

"...On 9th October 1779, a group of English textile workers in Manchester rebelled against the introduction of machinery which threatened their skilled craft…The group went about destroying weaving machines and other tools as a form of protest....The replacement of people’s skilled craft with machines would gradually substitute their established roles in the textile industry, something they were keen to prevent..."

From The British Historical Archives:

"...The machine-breaking disturbances that rocked the wool and cotton industries were known as the ‘Luddite riots’. They began in Nottinghamshire in 1811 and quickly spread throughout the country, especially to the West Riding of Yorkshire and Lancashire in 1812, and also to Leicestershire and Derbyshire. ... they wanted to get rid of the new machinery that was causing unemployment among workers. Hand loom weavers did not want the introduction of power looms...."

History.com: "The original Luddites were British weavers and textile workers who objected to the increased use of mechanized looms and knitting frames... [the] weavers began breaking into factories and smashing textile machines. They called themselves “Luddites” after Ned Ludd, a young apprentice who was rumored to have wrecked a textile apparatus in 1779...."

From the Smithsonian:

"...One technology the Luddites commonly attacked was the stocking frame, a knitting machine developed [by] an Englishman named William Lee. Right from the start, concern that it would displace traditional hand-knitters had led Queen Elizabeth I to deny Lee a patent.... Episodes of machine-breaking occurred in Britain from the 1760s onward, and in France during the 1789 revolution...."

Of course, one can make the asinine observation that Luddites "weren't against technology per se". They were simply against any and all technology that made their jobs obsolete. And willing to commit violence -- including murder -- to prevent it.
 
The audiobook narration I’m listening to this week is impossibly bouncy, earnest, and over-enunciated for such a dry scientific topic (mycology), I’m wondering now if it’s AI based. Before I just thought the narrator was annoying, to the point of it being a chore to finish it out.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

zohaibahd
  • Locked
Computer science coding classes deemphasize syntax as professors teach higher-level skills in AI era
2
Replies
26
Views
194
Endymio
Endymio
zohaibahd
Samsung on cloud nine after 933% Q1 profit jump, thanks to AI wave
Replies
2
Views
73
p51d007
p51d007
Daniel Sims
Nvidia thinks its GPUs are better for onboard AI than NPUs
Replies
7
Views
94
kiwigraeme
K

Latest posts

Back