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Audible unveils plans to use AI voices to narrate audiobooks (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I prefer listening to real people. No matter how good AI voices become, I still like knowing that the one reading the book to me understands what they are saying.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I completely agree. I don't even like it when the human reader clearly doesn't understand what they're saying, so some AI flatly telling me the story isn't going to cut it.

    For the humans, someone mispronounced "quay" for example. "La Jolla" was another standout mistake that took me out of the story.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Dude, I know how you feel xD back in 2009 I bought an audio recording of the first Twilight book because I was curious about ehat the fuss was about. It was in Danish, as I am Danish, and the narrator, bless her, had a very Danish way of pronouncing the word "flirting". In Danish we don't have a modern word for flirting so we just use the English one with English pronunciation, but this lady, who already sounded like she was in her 60s, just went full Dane on that word and it completely took me out of the story and had me yell at my ghettoblaster "FLIRTING" everytime she pronounced her mutilated version of that word. I don't even know how to write a phonetic version of what the fuck she said, but I'll try.

    Fleert-eh

    Fuck me, it's been almost 16 years and just spelling it out made my skin crawl.

    I also hated that book, but that wasn't really the narrator's fault. Had to pause the fuck out of it several times and rage clean my apartment. Nobody had told me about how it romanticized abusive relationships and I had JUST gotten out of one of those so to say I was triggered was an understatement. The mispronounciations of flirting were just the garnish on top, lol.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I watch those movie recaps from YouTube while I work. The AI was obviously talking about a nine one one call but called it a nine hundred and eleven. Or when it’s talking about nine eleven. It instantly snaps you out of it. It’s sorta funny as background noise but I would 100% be avoiding it as a purchase.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The issue is there’s a million books out there with no audio and never will. Im ok with Ai doing readings on books that wouldn’t otherwise get an audio version

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    With machine voice with no attempts at imitate human's intonation - yes.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Hey for the deaf and people who need the info on the page, robot voice is better than nothing.

    Just pretend the book is being narrated by Stephen Hawking!

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Sure, but it is still lame for a company like Audible to expect people to pay for their service and then they decide to cut costs by switching to AI voices. They can afford to hire actors to read their books. They have no excuse to go do that.

    Meanwhile what you're talking about if books and stories that may not get to be picked to be narrated and well, I can see where ai voices could be a benefit in those cases. Especially for people with dyslexia.

    I just disagree with a company that sells itself on narrated books and then they go and have robots read their shit? Why should anyone pay for that? Because I'm sure their prices wouldn't go down either.

    And when all is said and done, personally, I just prefer that a human being is reading to me. Especially if it is fiction.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Does audible actually do the audiobooks? I assumed it was the publishers. Sometimes the books i want aren’t available on audio which I listen to while working

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