I just listened to this AI generated audiobook and if it didn’t say it was AI, I’d have thought it was human-made. It has different voices, dramatization, sound effects… The last I’d heard about this tech was a post saying Stephen Fry’s voice was stolen and replicated by AI. But since then, nothing, even though it’s clearly advanced incredibly fast. You’d expect more buzz for something that went from detectable as AI to indistinguishable from humans so quickly. How is it that no one is talking about AI generated audiobooks and their rapid improvement? This seems like a huge deal to me.
As someone who only consumes books in audiobook form this is great news for me, I tried to listen to some automatically generated audio books around 2 years ago and I found them horrible to listen to just because they sounded so off.
I’d love to be able to copy in the text of a book and get actually listenable (is that a proper word?) audiobook out of the other side for some books that will just simply never be recorded by actual people due to being too old / obscure.
I’ve been wanting to be able to listen to the Pelucidar books for years but they just don’t exist in audio format, is there somewhere publically available that I can do this?
I would guess there is a LOT of work going into each voice. Playing with different parameters and prompts. I don’t think it’s as simple as just copying the text into a box. Not yet at least :)
That’s a good thought there though. Audiobooks could have each character voiced uniquely.
This is literally the only upside I see from this.
One of the Dune audio books started off as multiple voices and then part way through it was finished by just one guy. Really impressed with it at first, and then really kind of debuffed by it. I had already read the book years before so it wasn’t a big deal, but like wtf?
Lol what a troll audio book.
I can hope! With the speed things are developing it may not be too long.
I haven’t played around with or looked into much to do with AI at all but would be willing to put in some time into playing with prompts / parameters if it meant I could eventually create a reliable work flow to create things such as what I mentioned.
I think I’ll have to do some research, I need some more old school hollow earth stories in my life xD
Just curious, but how come you only consume books in audio format? (Please forgive me if this was rude to ask.)
I can’t speak for OP but I do this as well. For me it’s because I listen to them on the drive to/from dropping my kids off at school and I’ll have it playing while I’m working or playing a game.
As someone who would like to do this, how well do you actually pay attention to what is going on? I’d do so much more reading if I didn’t have to go back and reread paragraphs several times over because I simply can’t pay attention, let alone if I’m doing something else entirely
It depends. It definitely is easy to get distracted and need to rewind but I found that happens much less often than with sitting down and reading in text form.
Its a solid solution and I recommend you give it a try.
AudiobookBay and youtube have tons of books
Might legit work for me, as I do sometimes do that with things that aren’t plot-focused. Mostly audio youtube videos, podcasts, the like
Myanonamouse ftw! :D
If you’re interested further, check if your local library has a partnership with Libby. It’s an app that you can check out audiobooks from.
I think your success with these apps depends heavily on your country. I always hear good things about Libby in the US but the equivalent here in the UK I think is absolute dog shit.
The selection is woefully small not even including really popular books like say lord of the rings for example, you can request books are added but they have a finite amount of books they can add in a month and of all the things I requested they never added any of them.
On top of that often I would have to join a virtual queue because someone already "checked out " the audio book I wanted to listen to and so you have to wait for them to finish. Often as well they wouldn’t “return” it when they had finished so I’d have to wait until the standard amount of time was up and the system forced them to return it before I was able to listen to it.
It cost a tenner a month to get access to this service but in the state it was in last I tried it I wouldn’t even say it was worth that.
I listen to audiobooks when driving as well and am PRETTY sure i have ADHD (haven’t gotten officially diagnosed yet). For me, it… “distracts” the part of my brain that wants to get frustrated at all the bad drivers/traffic slowdowns. Unless things get particularly hectic, like trying to make it to an exit in time in dense traffic, it usually works great, and if I find myself not taking in certain parts, I tap a button on my audiobook app that goes back 30 seconds so I can properly understand it.
It’s a great combo, because like you, if I’m just sitting at home listening to an audiobook, I get “partially bored” and start looking at random stuff online. But when driving, well, that part of my brain is focused on driving, so I don’t get bored like that.
I’m really reconsidering that, because I legit hate other drivers. I wanna be less annoyed by driving
To weigh in on the concentrating part I find if I have something to do like when I am setting machines at work which does involve thinking about what I am doing then I actually concentrate well and take in what I am listening to and absorb it. Once I have finished setting the machine and start running it which requires little to not thought (until something goes wrong) that is when I won’t be able to concentrate on the book and will usually switch to music as my mind wanders off.
So for things like driving, running, cleaning, cooking etc I will often put a book on and concentrate just fine on what is being said.
With driving and running it does depend on my mood though as both those activities have a certain level of your brain switching off and running on auto pilot which is when I find myself starting to not concentrate.
I’d definitely recommend giving it a try and seeing how you find it as it helps the time fly by if you can get into it :)
I hate them too… to me, they drive like they walk around stores (Especially at Costco!). They’re either very slow and in the way, with no self awareness of that fact, or right on your ass, pressuring you. Almost no inbetween these days.
That makes a lot of sense actually!
Not OP, but I almost exclusively read novels and non fiction via audiobooks. For context, I’m on pace for 70 books this year.
My main reason for audiobooks is I having a driving commute. Two hours a day round trip. Audiobooks keep me sane in a way that podcasts or music do not. I also do audiobooks when doing chores around the house.
Second, I struggle to focus on reading a book on my phone. Too many distractions and I think the reading experience is subpar. I do have an eInk reader, but I haven’t charged it in years because it’s easier to do audiobooks.
Physical books are rare in my home, but that’s a self-reinforcing cycle since I enjoy audiobooks so much.
Personally I mostly use audio books instead of reading because I get eye strain a lot easier than I used to. I go to an eye specialist for unrelated issues yearly, so it’s not an issue with a wrong lens prescription. It’s not a problem when I’m doing a low attention task where I can look away frequently, but for reading it sucks.
I like to read books before bed, but need darkness for a while before I have any chance of going to sleep, so me and my wife listen to 45min of audio book a night before going to sleep. Plus when we listen together there is no need to worry about getting ahead of each other and spoiling stuff.
I read books in other scenarios but that ritual is by the most time I have for reading and the most consistent as well.
Not rude at all, similar to the other responses people have given but it oa two fold really. Firstly I just don’t do well with sitting and reading a book, I get bored very quickly, can’t concentrate on what is happening and start re-reading sentences or pages over and over where I am not paying attention properly. Additionally after only a couple of pages it will start putting me to sleep, I guess my attention span is just not sufficient for this form of media.
As a result I never read any books until I discovered audiobooks and my love for them, I honestly just disregarded books as a form of entertainment and thought they were a waste of time until discovering this way to consumer them which wasn’t until I was in my early 30s.
On top of that I now listen to them mostly at work, I work with industrial machines and the work is repetitive as fuck and having a book to listen to makes the time go a lot faster and in a lot more interesting manner. Consequently I now love books and will listen to between 6 and 10 hours a day and now listen to them when I’m doing things like cooking, cleaning or running when I am not at work.
Well you can always pay someone to read it for you. Blind people do that.
Are any of these books public domain? If so the print version could be eligible for inclusion at Project Guttenberg. PG has very specific docs about eligibility for this. You could probably get a scan from archive.org if you don’t have one. You would have to clean up the OCR by hand.
Then it would eligible to be requested from the volunteer (human) readers who have been pumping out Libra audio books for years at LibriVox.
Recently I saw Gutenberg has a collab. They are producing and distributing Libre guidebooks generated by AI. I believe I read on one of the pages they have 4000 done. I haven’t tried it out but I guess I should.
I assume this is also a great benefit as fertilizer down at the old AI content farm which is otherwise totally run over with reddit shitposts.
If anyone tries it let me know how it goes.
The books I specifically mentioned are now public domain as they are old enough and librevox is where I actually started my audiobook (and books in general) journey. One of them is on there but it is only the second book of what is a 5 or more book series which is kinda frustrating.
The volunteer readers are very hit and miss however and I find that more than half are just not listenable for me due to different reasons from poor actual recordings, poor reading ability by the reader with excessive pauses added “errs and ummms” to mispronunciation of words constantly. These are pedantic reasons maybe and I throw no shade over it to the people that have volunteered their time to read these books but I just can’t listen to them personally for the same reason I could never get through any amount of time with a robotic text to speech program of the past.
I’ll look into the project Gutenberg thing however, thanks for making me aware of it and see what is up with that :)
This is a great use for it!
I’m pretty sure that Amazon tried to do this with Kindle a few years ago and got sued by book publishers.
Ahh, it was audible.
It’s only a matter of time though before this sort of thing is ruled on and deals are inked. Open source is already getting pretty far too.
The books I mentioned and had in mind are old enough that they are now public domain and so this issue would not affect them. :)