Artificial intelligence is capable of amazing things. Apple has just launched a new service that allows the IA be able to narrate audiobooks. The technology company, which will soon enter the virtual reality and augmented reality hardware market, now allows any author who wishes to use this service. The firm makes available to him for this both a male robot, named Jackson, and a female one, Madison.
Currently, there are already dozens of audiobooks of this type available in the native Apple ‘app’ Books. All narrated in English. “Many authors, especially independent authors and those associated with small publishers, are unable to create audiobooks due to the cost and complexity of production. Apple Books digital storytelling makes audiobook creation more accessible to everyone, helping meet growing demand by making more books available for listeners to enjoy.”
On paper, according to Apple, all are advantages. However, there are already those who are beginning to raise their voices about the danger that this new tool can represent for professionals dedicated to audiobook narration. A profession that, now, joins others, among them cartoonists, writers and journalists, who could be threatened by the development of artificial intelligence. All in all, it is clear that for the damage to be great, and AI ends up putting thousands of skilled workers out of work or making the sector noticeably precarious, technology still has to advance.
“Immediately the workers are not at risk. But in the future, and that future could come in two years or less, things are likely to change,” he explained to ABC. Juan Ignacio Rouyet, professor specializing in artificial intelligence and ethics at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR). The expert points out that, although AIs like Apple’s “still make pronunciation errors among other mistakes, they will end up solving them with training.”
Over the last few years, and partly thanks to the pandemic, the audiobook business has exploded. By the end of the decade, some reports suggest that it could be around 35,000 million dollars globally by the end of the decade. Right now, the business is largely through Amazon. The technology currently concentrates 80% of the catalog of audiobooks available in Spanish through its platform Audible. Meanwhile, other companies, such as Spotify, they have already shared their intention to take a piece of the pie.
A few months ago, during the annual meeting of the audio streaming application, the company’s CEO, Daniel Enk, stated that Spotify sees an opportunity of 70,000 million dollars a year in audiobooks. With the arrival of the new Apple AI, it is clear that the iPhone firm seeks to be more competitive in a rapidly growing market. The question remains, however, as to whether the automated locution of books will end up generating a trend. Something that experts within the publishing sector doubt.
“Companies look at the audiobook market and see that money can be made,” says Canadian literary agent Carly Watters in statements to ‘The Guardian’, who also points out that with its AI, Apple “seeks to generate content, but nothing more. This is not what customers want to hear. There is a lot of value in storytelling and in telling stories.”
And it is that, although the machine of the apple firm offers good results, for the moment it is far from being equated with the great professionals. They even make mistakes in pronunciation and interpretation, as explained by the UNIR professor and they share media such as ‘Ars Technica’.
The human, an added value
However, technology companies continue to work on developments that allow machines to be increasingly competent. Just a few hours ago Microsoft introduced a new AI called Vall-E which, according to the company, is capable of replicating anyone’s tone of voice. It only needs three seconds of recording to achieve it and, in addition, it is capable of offering very good results, as shown by the examples shared by the company so far.
Be that as it may, from Rouyet’s point of view, as AIs of this type continue to improve, it is likely that the voiceover of audiobooks by professionals ends up becoming a lucky extra. “It could become a new value category that makes the audiobook more expensive than in those cases where an AI is behind it. In the end, it is difficult for a machine to be able to intonate, for example, an exclamation in various ways, just as a voice actor would, which would give it its own nuances.
The expert points out, in this regard, that “the artistic part of the locution is not going to disappear, what will happen is that it will be democratized and anyone will be able to access it.”