4 ms·

I think the cat is already out of the bag, and the death of human narration is imminent. The fight now seems to be whether this transformation happens only in

I think the cat is already out of the bag, and the death of human narration is imminent. The fight now seems to be whether this transformation happens only in production, or companies like Apple succeed in breaking the total Audiobook price apart into "license" and "production", only buying the license and have the production done on their proprietary servers. Overall, I agree it's inevitable that this results in a sharp decline in professionally narrated Audiobooks...

amelius 4y ago
> Overall, I agree it's inevitable that this results in a sharp decline in professionally narrated Audiobooks... Or, it will increase demand for audiobooks so much that more humans are needed to create top-notch audio.
- rickdeckard 4y ago
  I don't know how badly narrated Audiobooks can increase the demand for Audiobooks as a whole. The only scenario I could imagine is a narration language where Audiobooks didn't exist so far for economic reasons (i.e. low population). Digital narration could bring down production costs to the point of making it economic, basically creating the audiobook market for this language. But then, if the narration is bad (which it likely is because TTS is worse in minor languages), I don't know how many users could be converted to pay a premium for a better human narration. Also here I think it's more likely that funding will be used to improve the narration engine as a whole instead of going back to hiring humans and renting a studio for each book...
rdevsrex 4y ago
One of the things I like is when the narrator has to suppress a laugh during a funny passage, or can express a character's anger or frustration. Until AI is so good that it can mimic emotion, I think there will be a market for human narrators. Of course it will be smaller than what it is now, but I think people will specialize.
- rickdeckard 4y ago
  > One of the things I like is when the narrator has to suppress a laugh during a funny passage, or can express a character's anger or frustration. I doubt there are big issues for an AI to verbally mimic emotion. Placing emotion correctly in a long narration might be tricky if there are no indicators in the text, but I'm sure there will be a convenient self-service authoring tool where the Author/Publisher can adjust the emotion with a slider if he wants to finetune the result... > Until AI is so good that it can mimic emotion, I think there will be a market for human narrators. Of course it will be smaller than what it is now, but I think people will specialize. A smaller market means higher cost per-unit, so higher prices per Audiobook. If the publisher needs to meet a specific price (i.e. to be listed on flat-fee audiobook-portals) he might be forced to produce digital narration as a default, which means the market for an additional "premium human narration" will have to prove itself first. I doubt that such a bar will be reached in most cases. It's more likely that people complaining about bad narration will put pressure on AI-engines to improve, but not form a market where a critical mass will pay additional 20$ for human narration...
- BuckyBeaver 4y ago
  They won't be able to. Not enough people will reject computer-generated narration and insist on real narrators for them to remain employed.

amelius 4y ago

> Overall, I agree it's inevitable that this results in a sharp decline in professionally narrated Audiobooks... Or, it will increase demand for audiobooks so much that more humans are needed to create top-notch audio.

rickdeckard 4y ago
I don't know how badly narrated Audiobooks can increase the demand for Audiobooks as a whole. The only scenario I could imagine is a narration language where Audiobooks didn't exist so far for economic reasons (i.e. low population). Digital narration could bring down production costs to the point of making it economic, basically creating the audiobook market for this language. But then, if the narration is bad (which it likely is because TTS is worse in minor languages), I don't know how many users could be converted to pay a premium for a better human narration. Also here I think it's more likely that funding will be used to improve the narration engine as a whole instead of going back to hiring humans and renting a studio for each book...

rdevsrex 4y ago

One of the things I like is when the narrator has to suppress a laugh during a funny passage, or can express a character's anger or frustration. Until AI is so good that it can mimic emotion, I think there will be a market for human narrators. Of course it will be smaller than what it is now, but I think people will specialize.

rickdeckard 4y ago
> One of the things I like is when the narrator has to suppress a laugh during a funny passage, or can express a character's anger or frustration. I doubt there are big issues for an AI to verbally mimic emotion. Placing emotion correctly in a long narration might be tricky if there are no indicators in the text, but I'm sure there will be a convenient self-service authoring tool where the Author/Publisher can adjust the emotion with a slider if he wants to finetune the result... > Until AI is so good that it can mimic emotion, I think there will be a market for human narrators. Of course it will be smaller than what it is now, but I think people will specialize. A smaller market means higher cost per-unit, so higher prices per Audiobook. If the publisher needs to meet a specific price (i.e. to be listed on flat-fee audiobook-portals) he might be forced to produce digital narration as a default, which means the market for an additional "premium human narration" will have to prove itself first. I doubt that such a bar will be reached in most cases. It's more likely that people complaining about bad narration will put pressure on AI-engines to improve, but not form a market where a critical mass will pay additional 20$ for human narration...
BuckyBeaver 4y ago
They won't be able to. Not enough people will reject computer-generated narration and insist on real narrators for them to remain employed.