In a move that could have huge implications for the multi-billion dollar audiobook industry, Apple's Books service now offers audiobook narrations by text-to-speech artificial intelligence. Apple says the new digital narration feature will make the creation of audiobooks more accessible to all by reducing the cost and complexity of producing them.
The current audiobook model requires authors to narrate their own books in a process that can take weeks and cost thousands for a publisher. Smaller publishers and authors may be able to put out an audiobook at a lower cost with the help of digital narration.
The feature is only available for romance and fiction books, where there are two available digital voices, Madison and Jackson. There are two more voices on the way. The service is only available in English at the moment, and Apple isn't very specific about the genres of books it can tackle. Romance or fiction is the primary category and mysteries and thrillers are not currently supported.
A series of romance novels with a small notice saying they're "Narrated by Apple Books" can be found if you search for "ai narration" in the books app. The names of the artificial narrators are listed.
Each audiobook listing that uses the company's digital narration service reads "This is an Apple Books audiobook narrated by a digital voice based on a human narrator" There is a combination of free and paid audiobooks, and the artificial voices sound about as good as you would expect, but with an unmistakably artificial edge.
According to The Guardian, which was the first to report the new feature, Apple intended to launch it in November, but delayed it because of Musk's acquisition ofTwitter and layoffs at Meta. According to reports, Apple is trying to get independent publishers to narrate their books and pay royalties to authors.
Publishers can put out other versions of the audiobook if they choose, according to Apple.
Apple has a different approach to narration than Amazon does. The text-to-speech feature was discontinued a decade ago due tocopyright concerns. In the past, at least one audiobook has appeared on Amazon, but it was removed after being reported.
audiobooks are the third pillar of the service along with music and podcasts. Due to its clash with Apple's rules around in-app payments, Spotify's audiobook ambitions have been the focus of much attention.
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