Books on the Nightstand 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.

Where’s the link ? There’s so much information on these Amazon pages I can’t find it

Hi Shannon
To connect to the audio sample, go to the 'In A Town Called Paradox' page on amazon.com, then look at the top far right of the page and you'll see a small box with the words 'Audio Book' written in it. Click on that and the page with the audio version will be presented. Underneath the picture of the front cover of the book on the left hand side of the book's audio version page you'll see 'Virtual Voice Sample'. Just click on that to listen. Let me know how you get on. You're right, the amazon.com pages are very busy.

It's okay, but not great! The words are there but not the feeling or emotion.

There's not enough variation to the voice, in my opinion. It sounds enough like a human to listen for a couple minutes, but I didn't make it the full 5 of the sample. Since I couldn't connect to how the narrator was feeling--excitement, humor, etc--it felt kind of boring. Sorry if that's disappointing. The only time I've really found AI to work for narration has been when the narrator themself is AI or an alien.

Hi Hannah
Thanks for your thoughts on the AI narration of 'In A Town Called Paradox'. It's not perfect, we know, but it is an interesting experiment. And we would not have been able to produce an audio edition of the book otherwise.

The audio edition is clearly labeled as an AI narration, which we think is essential.