Apple rolls out AI-narrated audiobooks, and it’s probably the start of a trend

• 
• 

Artificial narrators record audiobooks instead of humans in a sound booth. The audiobooks are listed in the books app.

Clicking on the information icon next to the line will bring up a text box that explains the book is narrated by a digital voice. There are many digital voices in the Apple Books library, with names like "Madison" or "Jackson", but each book is only offered with one of them.

We listened to an hour each of two digitally narrated titles. The calm tones were clear and mostly benign, and they could be mistaken for real human voices with a short listen. We did hear some anomalies, though—for example, an odd pronunciation of the city "San Antonio." And obviously, the neutral and emotionless voices are not replacements for styles of human audiobook narration that can be passionate performances.

Many publications in question are mostly low volume books from small publishers, like lesser known genres or romance novels, based on our searches.

Advertisement

According to The Guardian, Apple reached out to independent book publishers and told them it would front the cost of the digital recordings but pay authors royalties on sales. Some publishers said yes, and others did not. This is the beginning of Apple's effort, and more may be added in the future. Apple isn't the only company that will do it. The possibility of this happening has been discussed by both Amazon and Google before.

In the last few years, the popularity and sales of audiobooks have increased. Even though some independent publishers and self-published authors have flourished, audiobooks have mostly been a market for major publishers.

The availability of audiobooks for publications and authors that don't have a budget for audio versions could be an upside of this development. This development raises questions about what will happen to human narrators working in the business, as well as who will benefit most. Apple and other tech companies have a lot of power over publishers and authors because they want as many people as possible to see or hear their work.

There is a listing image by Samuel.