#Microblog Monday 368: AI Readers
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Publishers Weekly has an article on AI audiobooks — books read by computers rather than human actors.
I get that it’s expensive and difficult to create audiobooks, but I can’t imagine books without inflection and careful pauses to draw meaning. The ChickieNob and I are listening to the audiobook of Good Omens right now, and the actor transports you into the story with a unique voice for each character. I can’t imagine AI will ever be able to capture that warmth. At least, not today’s AI.
Do you think you’d enjoy a book read by AI?
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8 comments
I must admit, I have not gotten into audiobooks. I’ve found I can’t have an audiobook or podcast on AND multitask, because my mind/attention will wander and suddenly 20 minutes have gone by and what was that they were saying? If I’m going to listen, I have to sit there and make myself LISTEN to get the full benefit. That said, I do have a couple of audiobooks on my TBR list for the simple fact that people have told me they loved the narrator and how much the narration added to their enjoyment of the story. I can’t imagine an AI narrator would be more appealing than a “real” one, for the reasons you mentioned.
No! I can barely tolerate the Youtube info videos that use computer generated voices – I turn them off and read the subtitles. My favourite audiobooks have been BBC or radio productions with multiple real actors. And I stopped reading one of the Raven Boys books because the narrator’s voice was such a mismatch to the one in the book. AI audiobooks. Ugh.
No, no, no! Just no.
Oof, no. It would have to be some pretty fancy AI to make it worth it. There’s nothing like human readers. I’m not a big audio book person (I pretty much listen to podcasts when there’s listening to be had, and I do that in the car and when I’m doing puzzles or cooking), but when I have listened to audio books the quality of the reader(s) makes all the difference.
Oooooh noooo. This is not a good idea. My daughters and I even have favorite readers. We seek out books with those readers because they are so good. I don’t think AI can recreate that.
Would be no different than any other audiobook for me!
(Which is to say that I don’t listen to audio books, because I get tired of listening to people talk. My sister plays her audiobooks at 1.5-2X speed. It’s annoying AF.)
Reading the above comments has me laughing as I’m looking into an AI voice generator for some videos I’m making. It’s already everywhere and many people can’t tell they aren’t actually human. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/09/1028140/ai-voice-actors-sound-human/
No, but to be fair? I don’t care for audiobooks. IfI want to listen to something I’ll turn on TV or music. If I want to read, I actually want to read! Besides which I read FAST (whoever taught me to speed read in third grade when I finished reading everything in the class room may have made an error!) and waiting for someone to SAY what I could have read in half the time? Irritates me. AI would only make it more annoying.