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.
That depends entirely on how profitable it is and how much they can get authors onboard.
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.
It might be time to finally change that, especially considering what a piss poor job they have been doing for decades at their own part of the production of media.
A shitty narrator can get me to hate a book I like.
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.
First thing that comes to my mind would be Dougdoug. He’s a streamer who messes around with AI a fair bit for funny content, including using AI-generated voices at times.
Hm. I wasn’t able to listen to all 9:53:57, but in the samples I watched I heard a voice resembling the classical computer voice of Science Fiction movies of the 70s. Better than most YouTube AI generated audio content, but good enough to narrate audio books? Well, we’ll accustom to anything, I guess.
I don’t know if my timestamp went through, but the part I linked to was at 7h/19m/42s. That’s the relevant part, not necessarily the entire video. That’s a showcase of good AI voices.
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.
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.
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.
It might be time to finally change that, especially considering what a piss poor job they have been doing for decades at their own part of the production of media.
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.
Did you ever heard a single AI-narrated content that did not make you run away screaming?
You think they’ll be narrating books with Tiktok TTS?
To rephrase my question: where can I listen to an example of good AI spoken content?
First thing that comes to my mind would be Dougdoug. He’s a streamer who messes around with AI a fair bit for funny content, including using AI-generated voices at times.
https://youtu.be/2pbhnyrpHmY?t=7h19m42s
Hm. I wasn’t able to listen to all 9:53:57, but in the samples I watched I heard a voice resembling the classical computer voice of Science Fiction movies of the 70s. Better than most YouTube AI generated audio content, but good enough to narrate audio books? Well, we’ll accustom to anything, I guess.
I don’t know if my timestamp went through, but the part I linked to was at 7h/19m/42s. That’s the relevant part, not necessarily the entire video. That’s a showcase of good AI voices.
My browser eats timestamps, til. And yes, that is impressive.
Thanks, I’ll listen into it.