A couple of comments from a narrator whose worked through ACX before. First, the last few years have seen a race to the bottom for narrator rates, since during

A couple of comments from a narrator whose worked through ACX before. First, the last few years have seen a race to the bottom for narrator rates, since during the pandemic it was recognized that it's a job that can be easily done from home, literally from anywhere in the world. Accordingly, the up-front cost for an average quality 10 hour book is only about $1,500, and can be turned around in under two weeks from a human. If you get a really good and well known narrator, it's still only about $4,000 (and you'll probably get it quicker). Also, they're going to be competing against revenue share models from Amazon/Audible, which basically means it costs the author nothing up front. Amazon's bite out of audiobook sales is absurdly high (60%), so other companies could (and are) definitely improve on that. It's mostly a fight against Audible's brand at this point. But back to AI: AI narration is going to have to compete against humans willing to do a lot of work for very little pay. I'm honestly not sure the compute and QA costs will be competitive. And frankly, even if it is cheaper, it's not as if those savings will be passed back to the customer. If you'd like to look at how little it can cost to get a human to do voiceover work, check out fiverr.com and look for voice actors and narrators.