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Synthetic voices have AI voices have been proliferating for years, and the rise of generative artificial intelligence in the 1920s has accelerated that process. AI voices are everywhere: in podcasts, in political campaigns, and in chatbots where they, perhaps not so subtly, replicate the voices of celebrities. Soon, they’ll be in your audiobooks, too.
Audible, the audiobook company owned by Amazon, announced a test program to generate AI voice clones to read works on its audiobook marketplace. The announcement was made via a post on ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange), Audible’s service that allows authors and publishers to turn written books into audiobooks.
“We’re taking steps to test new technologies that will help expand our catalog,” the post says, “and this week we’re inviting a small group of narrators to participate in a US-only beta that will allow them to create and monetize replicas of their own voices using AI-generated voice technology.”
Audible says both narrators and authors will have control over which projects their AI voices are used in, and that final narrations will be reviewed as part of ACX’s production process to check for mispronunciations or other errors.
Still, this might seem a bit incongruent with Audible’s current approach to narrated audiobooks, given that even after this announcement, ACX Filing Requirements Audiobook narrations are still said to “need to be narrated by a human,” but Amazon has already been bullish on AI and implemented a Similar AI audio program for its Kindle direct publishing operation last year.
Right now, the Audible program is limited and involves a select group of narrators, but it’s easy to see where it could go from here, and soon Audible could open up to allow any author capable of generating an AI voice to read their own book. Other companies are also playing in this space; startup Rebind is recruiting authors to allow their voices to be cloned so that an AI version of them can “guide” readers through their texts. Audiobook fans are excited to hear the latest in the series. On the fence About all this.
Personally, I can’t wait until these sweet yet mysterious voices fall into the hands of the dinosaur eroticists.
Here are some other consumer tech news from this week.
Papers, please
Google is allowing users to digitize even more personal information. Coming soon: passports.
Last year, Google added digital driver’s licenses to its Wallet platform, allowing Android users to store identification details on their phones. Soon (Google doesn’t say exactly when) users will be able to Do the same with your US passports..
Of course, there are some caveats. The Google Wallet version of your passport will only be accepted at specific TSA checkpoints where digital IDs are allowed.Here is a map.) Plus, Google makes a point of recommending that you keep your passport handy anyway. Digital IDs aren’t typically accepted anywhere outside of airports, so if you find yourself in a pinch while abroad, you’ll want to have your physical documentation. But for a lucky subset of travelers, this will solve the problem of having to pull yet another thing out of your bag when going through airport security.
Keeping control
Hey, speaking of Google, the company also announced some good news for all of us filthy browser tab hoarders. Tab grouping is a feature in Google Chrome that lets you save all of your browser tabs into group folders for easy sorting. (I’ll read them later, I swear!) Google says that its tab grouping feature It will be synchronized soon. platforms. This means you can seamlessly continue your desktop browsing on your mobile device, where you definitely won’t be ignoring them anymore.
Tab grouping will also be available soon in Chrome on iOS, and should be able to sync across desktop computers as well. When will all this arrive? Well, once again Google was not very clear about this. Anyway, it’s best to start collecting all those browser tabs now. You never know when you’ll need them again.
Menlo-Upon-Tyne
Meta, the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp company that is also involved in artificial intelligence, has announced that its AI services are aimed at colonizing a new cultural area: the British. Meta announced that it will train its AI models using data from the users of its platforms in the United Kingdom.
Specifically, data will be collected from anyone using Facebook or Instagram in the UK and then used to train Meta’s AI accordingly. In its announcement, Meta says it hopes this move will help its AI tools more accurately reflect British culture and language.
