World, Writing, Wealth discussion

This posting is to ask your opinion of AI narration of audio books.

Recently, Amazon invited co-author Richard Starks and me to use a beta version of its AI narration program to produce an audio edition of our novel, 'In A Town Called Paradox'. We took Amazon up on its offer (with some reservations), and in just 15 minutes we had an audio version of our novel posted on our Amazon page.

Here's the link to the free excerpt of the audio on the 'In A Town Called Paradox' Amazon page.
http://www.amzn.com/B08LG9XZL9

What do you think of it? The narration is not perfect, but do you think it's acceptable to readers? Perhaps you'd like to post your opinion here. Thank you.

I've followed a similar option with Apple, but its taking months to get through my set of books.

A sample can be had on this page.

REF: https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/...

Currently no cost, just includes a non-compete clause for 6 months. I.e. No other audio platforms for the same book for 6 months after Apple publishes it.

For a cash-strapped author it seems like a good deal

I listenened to your sample. Sounds realistic enough to 'pass as human,' once it gets going.

Hi Graeme
Thanks for taking the time to listen. The opening of the audio is a little slow but it wasn't possible to speed that up without speeding up the entire audio. We thought the rendition was better than we expected it to be, although not perfect. Also, rather like trying out a new pair of shoes, it's hard to tell in a short walk just how happy you're going to feel three hours on.
Miriam

Miriam, I thought it was easy to listen to, although I don't think it sounded like a human reading it. But the whole point is to have someone listen to your book, and I think it works - at least for the part I listened to. Good writing, by the way. Did AI also write the blurb?

In essence, I'd love to have Vincent Price read my books ...

In the near future, I may be able to get an AI to do a Vincent voice over for my books - that'd be great.

We'll see what happens.

Hi Scout
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the audio extract from 'In A Town Called Paradox'. And we're glad to know you enjoyed our writing. In reply to your question about the blurb; we wrote it. It's the one used for all other versions of this book. Anything produced by AI is flagged as such. I think it's very important always to flag it whenever AI is involved.

Me, too. Thanks for your reply. Hope it works out for you.

Graeme wrote: "In essence, I'd love to have Vincent Price read my books ...

In the near future, I may be able to get an AI to do a Vincent voice over for my books - that'd be great.

I liked the text better than the AI voice on the sample, but you bring up an interesting point that was also raised on a Sherlock Holmes group - wouldn't it be interesting if you could get an AI version of the actor Jeremy Brett - or Basil Rathbone - to narrate Holmes stories. And I do like the Vincent Price idea.

But Barbara, don't forget Jeremy Brett, Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price were all once unknown actors, starting out in their careers.

Everyone's got to begin somewhere and AI will destroy the next generation's careers before they've even started. Just think of all the human talent - all the Bretts, Rathbones and Prices who will never even see the light of day.

We will be stuck in a neverending autoreel of watching the old greats. In fact, in the future, will humanity actually experience anything creative that is genuinely new?

Don't encourage AI to get a foothold. Once you do, it'll spread like a plague. No nuance is required with it. It is evil. As you Americans would say, period.

That's a forlorn hope Beau, even though I mostly agree with you.

You raise an excellent point.

Mind you, once AI can write a better story than any human...

I'm sorry to say that you're probably right, Adrian.

Graeme, if AI gets to that level, we'd have to start asking what is the point of human beings.

And even more worryingly, if AI gets to that level, IT may start asking the same question.

No good will come of AI. Humans who support it are like turkeys voting for Christmas.

My concern too, Beau.

I agree

Not a comment on the OP's link, but AI in general. I have often found that a problem with AI is that it tends to reproduce both audio and text phonetically, and English is not a phonetic language.
For example - I was watching a Sherlock Holmes series from the '80s (the Geoffrey Whitehead one) and Lestrade would say "Mr. Holmes," but because he had an accent, he pronounced it "Mr. Hems" and so "Mr. Hems" was how the auto generated subtitles rendered it. Maybe they were trying to create subtitles that reproduced a written equivalent of the audio, but this wasn't consistent, so it was confusing.
Then we were watching a video about Golden age film stars, clearly AI generated narration - a lot of times the lack of inflection is a giveaway, but when they got to Bette Davis, the audio rendered it as "Bet" - now, that's how it looks, but everyone knew, (and Davis, when pronouncing her own name in old clips) that it's pronounced "Betty".

It does nto bother me much I do find it annoying that obviously mispronounced words reinforce that fact it is not a human reading. It also tends for me to be bland and almost monotone.

We were watching a podcast commentary the other night, and there were AI generated subtitles. When the podcaster said "Baghdadi" the word was rendered as either "Bag Daddy" or "Back Daddy"

I was watching a cooking video narrated by AI and when it got to the word "margarine" it pronounced it mar-ghar-reen.

I just ran across an AI narrated book that called Percival's as Percival s.