From The New Publishing Standard:
Per a report in Publishers Weekly yesterday, Google Play has now expanded its AI-narrated audiobook creation option to the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Spain.
. . . .
[B]y offering 35+ narative voices in English and Spanish, the Google Play Books AI-narration option means publishers of all sizes have the chance to upload an ebook or epub file and use what, for now, are free tools to tweak an automated narration before publishing on Google Play and, all importantly, exporting the finished file to be sold elsewhere.
The Google Play Books AI Narration page carries a quote from respected industry heavyweight and former IPA President Richard Charkin of Mensch Publishing saying “The technology has supassed my expectations.”
Again quite what is new here is not clear, but the PW post at least gives me an excuse to bring up AI-narration options once more.
No, AI narration will not put competent real-life narrators out of jobs any time soon, if ever.
What it will do is open up audio to authors and publishers to reach new consumers with acceptable, if not superb, narration that will being in revenue from low-profile and backlist titles that would otherwise never make it to the audiobook platforms.
. . . .
The single biggest drag on AI-narration development right now is not the technology – that’s already comfortably within acceptable limits, and can only get better – but the platforms themselves, which either discourage or outright disallow AI-narrated content.
Link to the rest at The New Publishing Standard
PG is a big fan of well-trained human voice boxes performing/reading literary works. That said, he doesn’t think he would feel secure if he were making his living as an audiobook narrator/voice actor.
AI in the voice area has been advancing at an incredible rate of speed over the past few years. PG suggests it won’t stop until AI provides professional-level audio from text.
AI has a long way to go for fiction (different voices) but does well for non-fiction (straight read). The author hiring this service must still listen to the entire book, carefully, to ensure no words were mispronounced just as an author should for human narration. Right now, authors can find quality human narrators and production for a similar cost.
It’s important to note that ACX (Audible) does not accept machine narration.