While there is currently no announced format for audiobooks developed with artificial intelligence, industry experts confirm that thousands of such books developed from an audio database are now in the market.
Among the most advanced services in this field, Deep Zen provides technology through which an audiobook can be developed at a quarter of the value of traditional projects.
This small London-based company relies on a database it created by recording the voices of different actors who were asked to express a variety of emotions.
“We have signed a license agreement with all the sounds we use”, explains Kamis Taylan, general manager of “Deep Zen”, adding: “We pay for the recordings (…) in addition to paying royalties each time that we use a sound”. for a project,” according to the agency’s report. AFP.
Kamis Taylan explains: “There is a gray area” that several platforms exploit, because “they take different voices for you, me, and five other people, to make a new voice without paying anything under the pretext that the voice does not ‘belongs to no one.’
In addition to its pre-recorded voices, the “Speechky” startup allows the use of existing voices in existing databases, according to general manager Dima Abramov, who explains that this second functionality requires the signing of a contract specifying the rights of use. ‘use.
But according to professionals interviewed by AFP, many names in traditional publishing are already using so-called generative artificial intelligence, a technology capable of creating texts, images, videos or sounds, without human intervention, from existing content.
“Professional storytelling has always been, and will continue to be, essential to Audible listening,” said a spokeswoman for Amazon audiobook giant Audible.
“However, as technology improves, we envision a future where human interpretation and generated content (using AI) can co-exist,” she added.
Tech giants are investing heavily in artificial intelligence and participating in the booming economy of audiobooks created with this software.
At the beginning of the year, “Apple” launched an offer including “digital storytelling”, which aims, according to the company, to “make the creation of audio books accessible to all”, in particular “to authors, independents and small publishers “.
Google offers a similar service, which it calls “self-narrative.”
“We need to popularize the publishing industry on a large scale, because in the current situation, only the most famous names turn into audiobooks,” says Kamis Telan.
“Storytelling, at its core, allows humans to reconnect with their humanity,” says Emily Ellet, president of the Association of Professional Audiobook Tellers, arguing that “storytelling should remain entirely human.”
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