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Why isn't everyone talking about AI generated audiobooks? (reddthat.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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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.

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[–] 30 points 2 years ago (7 children)

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?

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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 :)

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's a good thought there though. Audiobooks could have each character voiced uniquely.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    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

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago*

    I don't see why you couldn't give a few examples and then grab the dialog of a person in along with their description (or just the whole book) and get the llm to generate the prompt for you

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Just curious, but how come you only consume books in audio format? (Please forgive me if this was rude to ask.)

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    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

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I'm really reconsidering that, because I legit hate other drivers. I wanna be less annoyed by driving

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    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 :)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    You'd be surprised how much stuff you can miss in books and still be clipping along ;)

    But in all seriousness, I have ADHD and sometimes my mind wanders and I have to rewind but it's not often... anymore.

    I found audiobooks to be a learned habit. I started with books I knew well already (hello Harry Potter) or books I watched the movies for (Lord of the Rings). It helped if I tuned out because I wasn't going to to miss anything I didn't already know.

    A couple of pluses on audiobooks is that you can increase or decrease the reading speed depending on your comfortability (I usually sit between 1.4x - 1.6x, YMMV and it depends on the pacing of the recorded person). Also, you experience the authors work entirely without skipping things (which we often do as readers)

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Back in the 19th century when unions were powerful and innovative, a lot of people had jobs where they had to sit and do repetitive tasks in a room all day. A lot of it was handwork that didn't have big loud machines.

    So one of the demands made by workers in such situations was that the employer would pay someone to come in and provide entertainment such as reading a book or giving talks on subjects of interest. The book or lecturer of course being selected by the workers via the democratic process of the union. And then of course the workers became way more educated because they suddenly had 8-12 hours daily to read books together. Since knowledge is power, the workers became stronger and more decisive in their collective actions.

    When you are listening to audiobook at work you can know you are in a long tradition of workers exercising power over their job conditions. Although now it is individualized in the implementation. The desire to have your mind even though the job has your body and some concentration is universal.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

    Project Gutenberg, Microsoft, and MIT have worked together to create thousands of free and open audiobooks using new neural text-to-speech technology and Project Gutenberg's large open-access collection of e-books. This project aims to make literature more accessible to (audio)book-lovers everywhere and democratize access to high quality audiobooks. Whether you are learning to read, looking for inclusive reading technology, or about to head out on a long drive, we hope you enjoy this audiobook collection.

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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 :)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Totally true about the librivox readers. They are doing their best. :) There are some total gems in there. But I have definitely given up on a few of them. OTOH I have given up on professionally read audiobooks too for all sorts of reasons.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Absolutely, I love some of the librevox readers and have found new books I enjoyed immensely just from seeing what other things the ones I enjoyed had read, i found it a good way to find new books for a while because usually they are reading other books they personally enjoy that are similar to the one I had looked for initially.

    Likewise just because they are "professionally read" doesn't make them good by default. Some peoples voices or accents just don't sit well with me trying to listen to them which is no fault of their own and personal preference on my part but some are just plain bad and I can't believe someone paid them for that work and found it acceptable enough to release it into the wider world :D

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I listen to a lot of audiobooks too, but I wouldn't listen to something like this.

    Have you listened to the one OP posted? After a minute I'm sleeping. There's no emotion, no tension, nothing.

    I can't stress enough how bad OP's sounds. Sure, it sounds natural when compared to what technology was capable of some time ago, but it's dead inside.

    Good voice actors bring a book alive. This doesn't.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    I hadn't actually when I originally wrote this comment as I wasn't somewhere that I could listen to audio (without being an obnoxious cunt and I won't be one of those people even if the majority of people seem to be OK with it xD)

    However I would agree, I couldn't listen to a whole book with this monotonous drone of a voice, however like you said compared to what was produced by voice to text type systems of the past this is miles ahead and I certainly look forward to the technology progressing to a point where it is listenable for me.

    I agree with good voice actors being essential for enjoyment, I think that is one of the reasons I fell in love with graphic audio productions over the last couple of years.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Look at the description of the video. It's not automatically generated. He made several voices and narrator and applied it to each character.

    While insanely cool, it's not "put in book here, get audio book there"

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Yes I realise that and was over simplifying in this response but as I stated in another comment I would be more than happy to work on prompts for myself if it could generate something satisfactory to listen to.

    The video posted by OP still sounds a bit "dead" so I don't think the tech is quite there yet but it is promising for the future the way it is headed.

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