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Apple Announces AI Audiobooks
Is Apple’s new digital narration program set to change the creation of audiobooks forever?
When launching new products, Apple doesn’t usually skimp on fanfare. Yet, the launch of their new game-changing digital narration program for Apple Books has almost completely flown under the radar.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, AI-produced audiobooks, surely that’s not going to work. How can an AI bot compete with a human voice when it comes to showing emotion, knowing where and when to get excited, when to speed up or when to slow down? There is, after all, a lot more to delivering a good narration than simply being able to recognise and pronounce long passages of text — but this is Apple we’re talking about, so who knows, perhaps this is the start of something big.
So far, we’ve only been provided short samples of four new AI voices, but if these are anything to go by, it’s clear that Apple has made some significant technological advances. I’m not sure we’ll see any big-name publishers using Apple’s AI digital narration yet, but that’s not where Apple is targeting this new product.
“More and more book lovers are listening to audiobooks, yet only a fraction of books are converted to audio — leaving millions of titles unheard. Many authors — especially independent…
