Amazon.com Inc.’s Audible will begin inviting select a group of audiobook narrators from the United States to train artificial intelligence in their voices.
The mentioned audio materials can then be used to make recordings of audiobooks. In this case, we mean materials in the form of a kind of digital clones of real voices. The corresponding project, which will be launched this week, aims to quickly and inexpensively add more audiobooks to the service. Also, as part of the relevant initiative, one of the goals is to gain traditional narrators into the developing world of audiobook automation. It is worth noting that currently, some perceive such technological projects through the prism of danger and a certain degree of alarmism. At the same time, historical experience shows that fundamentally new solutions focused on application in the space of practical actions very often face distrust from potential consumers. At the same time, such a specific perception is not an obstacle to technological progress. This is also evidenced by historical experience.
Last year, Amazon, which, among other things, owns the best American delivery service, began offering US authors who publish their books independently and make these works of literary art available in the Kindle Store the opportunity to narrate texts with a virtual voice. It is worth noting that in May 2024, 40,000 books in Audible were marked as having been made as a result of using the appropriate technology.
Audible will encourage professional narrators to participate in the audiobook dubbing process. This decision is aimed at ensuring that the corresponding process is not performed exclusively using the so-called synthetic voice.
Audible is currently interested in solutions aimed at adding more exclusive content to its service.
