The quality is scaryeasily good enough to listen to for hours at a time.
It then puts that emotion into the voice.
It’s impressive and very convenient.
Kelly Skiiema / Unsplash
But do we really want a homogenized audiobook experience?
And what about those voice actors?
“But that attraction assumes that the product would be of equal quality to traditional narration.
Brett Jordan / Unsplash
I don’t think we’re one hundred percent there yet.
Don’t get me wrong, DeepZen is astonishingly good.
It’s a tremendous breakthrough, and its creators deserve immense praise and success.
Joel Muniz / Unsplash
But it’s not yet perfect.”
If you didn’t know they were computer-generated, you might not even realize.
Not for a while anyway.
Brett Jordan / Unsplash
Even then, a human can offer more nuanced and often more surprising interpretations.
An actor might put an unexpected twist on the words that a computer would never even consider.
“Will there be a surge of unknown authors using it?
I guarantee there will because it’s ‘good enough.'”
There is currently one barrier to easy audiobook AI oration, and it’s from Amazon.
Here’s the FAQ entryfrom the website:
“Text-to-speech or other automated recordings are not allowed.
Audible listeners choose audiobooks for the performance of the material, as well as the story.
To meet that expectation, your audiobook must be recorded by a human.”
This means that DeepZen-generated audiobooks are outfor now, at least.
Would you be happy to listen to audiobooks made this way?
When it happens, most people won’t even suspect.
And what about those voice actors?
Well, there will be at least one opportunity: They can go andwork for DeepZen.
