Synthetic voice has has been evolving for years, and the AI boom of the 20s has accelerated that process. Voice AI is everywhere—in podcastIN political campaignand in chatbots where they It can be a bit subtle when copying a celebrity’s voice.. Soon, it will all be up. in your audiobook also.
Audible, the audiobook company owned by Amazon, announced a pilot program to create AI voice transcripts to read works on its audiobook marketplace. The announcement was made via a post on ACX—Audiobook Creation Exchange—Audible’s service that allows authors and publishers to turn written books into audiobooks.
“We’re taking deliberate steps to test new technologies to help expand our catalog, and this week we’re inviting a small group of narrators to join a US-only beta that allows them to create and monetize voice copies of themselves using AI-generated voice technology,” the post said.
Audible says both narrators and authors have control over projects that use their AI voices, and final narrations will be reviewed as part of ACX’s production process to check for pronunciation errors or other errors.
However, this seems a bit inconsistent with Audible’s current approach to audiobooks with commentary, as even after this announcement, ACX Submission requirements still says that audiobook narration, “must be narrated by humans.” But Amazon is bullish on AI and has deployed Similar AI audio program for direct publishing on Kindle last year.
Right now, the Audible program is limited, with a select group of narrators participating. But it’s easy to see where this could go from here, and Audible could soon open up to any author with the ability to create an AI voice to read their own books. Other companies are getting into this space, too; startups Link back is recruiting authors to allow their voices to be transcribed so that AI versions of them can “guide” readers through their texts. Audiobook fans are on the fence about everything
Personally I can’t wait until these sweet yet strange voices fall into my hands. dinosaur porn.
Here’s some other consumer tech news this week.
Please submit documents
Google is letting users digitize even more of their personal information. Next up: passports.
Google added digital driving license into its Wallet platform last year, allowing Android users to store identity information on their phones. Soon (Google didn’t say exactly when) users will be able to do the same with their US passports.
There are some caveats, of course. The Google Wallet version of your passport will only be accepted at specific TSA checkpoints where digital IDs are allowed. (Here is the map.) Additionally, Google makes sure to keep your passport on hand. Digital IDs aren’t generally accepted anywhere other than airports, so if you’re in a pinch while abroad, you’ll want to have your physical paperwork handy. But for a lucky few travelers, this will solve the problem of having to take one more thing out of your bag when going through airport security.
Hold Tab
Speaking of Google, the company also announced some good news for all you nasty browser tab hoarders. Tab Groups is a feature in Google Chrome that lets you store all your browser tabs in a group folder for easier organization. (I’ll read them later, I swear!) Google says its grouping feature will be synchronized soon on platform. That means you can continue your desktop browsing journey seamlessly on your mobile devices, where you definitely won’t keep ignoring them.
Tab groups are also coming to Chrome on iOS soon, and they can sync on desktop too. How soon will all of this arrive? Well, again Google isn’t saying. Regardless, it’s a good idea to start collecting all those browser tabs now. You never know when you might need them again.
Menlo-Upon-Tyne
Meta—the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp that also does AI—has announced that its AI services will invade a new cultural world: the British. Meta announced that it will train its AI models on data from its platform users in the UK.
Specifically, the data will be collected from anyone using Facebook or Instagram in the UK, and then used to train Meta’s AI accordingly. In its announcement, Meta said it hopes the move will help its AI tools more accurately reflect British culture and language.
