Apple’s AI that turns any text into an audiobook.
In Apple’s intentions, it should be a major step forward from the previous scratchy and impersonal voices used by other services.
Apple has presented a long list of audiobooks, all in English. The peculiarity is that the story is not narrated by a flesh-and-blood reader, but by a voice artificially generated by artificial intelligence. In total, there are two artificial voices created by Apple.
In Apple’s intentions, it should be an important step forward compared to the previous croaking and impersonal voices that many sites and apps already offer for automatic reading of content. Apple ‘s digital voices were built from tens of millions of hours of recordings of real storytellers. They are, in other words, calibrated to be natural and engaging.
So far, the service has received a rather lukewarm reception. Many users have reported several errors in the pronunciation of words, even in common use. While The Guardian writes that it is a subversion of what is the real strength of audiobooks, that is the possibility of immersing yourself in a story thanks to the voice of a professional narrator who knows how to change tone and inflection of the voice depending on the context , of the character who is speaking and of the emotions he has to convey.
In short, Apple – disputes The Guardian – would have seen in audiobooks a new goose that lays golden eggs and has attempted to bombard the market with a huge number of contents at almost zero cost, without those investments and those efforts which normally other companies take charge. It will be up to the reader to reward or reject this strategy.
