Apple Books Introduces AI-Narrated Audiobooks

Apple Books has recently introduced "digital narration", a feature that allows audiobooks to be narrated by artificial intelligence. This development has significant potential to impact the multi-billion dollar audiobook industry, as it reduces the cost and complexity of producing audiobooks for authors and publishers.

Traditionally, audiobooks have been narrated by the authors themselves or professional voice actors, a process that can be time-consuming and expensive for publishers. However, with digital narration, smaller publishers and authors now have the ability to produce audiobooks at a much lower cost.

At present, digital narration is only available for romance and fiction books, with two digital voices currently available: Madison and Jackson. Two more voices, Helena and Mitchell, will be added for nonfiction books in the future. The service is currently only offered in English and has some restrictions on the genres of books that can be narrated by the digital voices. According to Apple's website, "primary category must be romance or fiction (literary, historical, and women's fiction are eligible; mysteries and thrillers, and science fiction and fantasy are not currently supported)."

Users can search for "AI narration" in the Books app to find a selection of romance novels narrated by Apple Books. The listings include a mix of free and paid audiobooks, and the artificial voices are intelligible but have an artificial edge that lacks the warmth of a human narrator. It is likely that the quality of AI voice technology will improve over time.

Apple's approach to digital narration differs from that of competitor Amazon, whose Audible platform requires that audiobooks be narrated by humans. Amazon's Kindles used to have a text-to-speech feature, but it was discontinued a decade ago due to copyright concerns. Spotify has also been investing in making audiobooks a key part of its streaming service, but has faced issues with Apple's rules around in-app payments.

Apple's digital narration feature was originally planned for launch in November 2022, but was delayed due to the headlines surrounding Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and layoffs at Meta. Apple has reportedly been reaching out to independent publishers about narrating their books, offering to cover the production costs in exchange for royalties. According to Apple's website, publishers and authors retain the audiobook rights and can release other versions of the audiobook if they choose.

The introduction of AI-narrated audiobooks raises interesting questions about the future of the industry. Will human narrators become obsolete? Will AI-narrated audiobooks become the norm, or will there always be a demand for the human touch? Only time will tell, but it is clear that Apple's digital narration feature has the potential to disrupt the industry and make audiobooks more widely available to authors and publishers.

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