For audiobook enthusiasts, Apple has unveiled an exciting look into the future with the introduction of its first range of AI-narrated books. While this advancement signals enormous possibilities, the somewhat robotic quality of the narrators establishes that human narration isn't quite obsolete yet.
To sample the AI-voiced audiobooks, simply open your Apple Books app and search for ‘AI narration'. The search results will display a selection of romance or fiction books, available for both purchase and free download, and labeled as “narrated by Apple Books”.
The platform offers two types of AI voices – a high-pitched voice named Madison and a deeper tone named Jackson, both with an American accent and currently only supporting English. You can preview these voices by clicking on the ‘preview' button under one of the Apple Books-narrated titles.
While Apple's AI voices indeed still possess a somewhat robotic, artificial quality, they are certainly breaking new grounds in the field of audio narration. An improvement of their warmth and expressiveness could pose a significant challenge to the popularity of human narrators like Stephen Fry and Julia Whelan.
The intent behind Apple's AI voices, per the company's statements, is to make audiobooks “more accessible to all”. However, this also paves a way for the technology giant to tap the immensely lucrative audiobook industry and gear up for fierce competition with rivals such as Amazon and Spotify.
Voicing concerns
As of now, it can be expected that AI-generated narrations will be mostly limited to books from smaller, independent publishers. This could potentially trigger a surge in available audiobook titles across platforms, as digital narration creates new opportunities for publishers and authors who had so far been priced out from converting printed matter to audio format.
However, resistance from larger publishers and voice actors could slow down the rise of AI narrators. Amazon's Kindle e-readers had their text-to-speech capabilities disabled several years ago, primarily due to copyright issues, leaving audiobooks recognized as unique works of art. Amazon, through its Audible platform, has also highlighted how publishers select voices based on the tone and genre of the book – a molding task challenging to achieve with just two AI voice types like Apple Books currently have.
Fake empire
AI-powered voice technology sees advancement along the same high-growth trajectory as deepfake videos, with web apps like Uberduck helping produce speech in famous voices. Amazon has even demonstrated a somewhat unnerving Alexa skill which can read The Wizard of Oz in a grandparent's voice.
As novel tools like Google Wavenet take great strides, AI voices will become more lifelike. Thus, barriers hindering their universal adoption in audiobooks may not be technological, but legal and ethical considerations.
For the time being, Apple Books' AI voices seem well-suited for non-fiction works rather than emotive storytelling, with the latter still in need of nuanced delivery that AI cannot replicate, yet. Meanwhile, we expect famous voice narrators to consider copyrighting and licensing their voices too. An influx of AI-narrated literature is undoubtedly looming over the horizon.
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