4 ms·

Interestingly, I know several people what would like AI to read stuff to them and read it to them in an interesting way (not Hal-9000 ish) One friend wants con

by nox101 2y ago

Interestingly, I know several people what would like AI to read stuff to them and read it to them in an interesting way (not Hal-9000 ish) One friend wants conference papers turned into audio. Another wants fan-fiction read dramatically.

Fluorescence 2y ago
I have found huge gaps with how digestible different audiobooks are. It's so painful when there is a book I am really excited to listen to and find that I just can't. Maybe I just mentally drop out mid-sentence or the words float past without carrying any meaning and it can be difficult to pin down why. One aspect is the performance. An accent or an intonation can cause a nails on blackboard type revulsion. A morose, monotone or bored voice, ugh? For example, I just can't do any Scott Brick performance (which is pretty annoying given how prolific he is) because he trails off every sentence in this weird pitch change that doesn't match how any normal person speaks. It causes me this distressing mental dissonance because it's so disconnected to the passage being read. I suspect it's a result of him just reading out words blind and not talking like a human trying to communicate specific meanings and feelings. This is also the problem with robot voices - the difference between a joke, a question, an assertion, a doubt, sarcasm or self-delusion can all be in the intonation. With text you might pause and revoice a passage to catch a meaning but the conveyor belt of audio means the next words are upon you giving no chance for reflection. The place where I can handle a robot voice is when using it with the text in front of me. I quite like it as a pace setter. I still have my own internal voice giving flavour but gain some reading endurance when tired or the material is boring/dry and I keep mentally wandering off. The other aspect is the style of writing - some writing is delightful to read but awful to listen to. The parameters includes everything from sentence structure to vocabulary. A simple example is lists: perfect for quickly imbibing visually but can be maddening to hear read out. Same with numbers, or parentheticals or footnotes or... so I generally can't listen to anything technical. The most listenable things for me is anything in a conversational style. However, even dialogue dominated works can be torture when they use certain patterns of "he said"/"she said" directions that are effectively punctuation and silent when we read but overwhelming when voiced. A first-person diary style often fits with being spoken without changes. There is a probably an AI opportunity to rewrite books to more resemble radio plays that work better as voice performances. IMHO voicing technical works needs some brand new ideas. Real life conference talks that just narrate their paper are torture to sit through. Successfully engaging speakers use personality, humour, anecdotes and structure talks playfully with setup/reveals, hypotheticals, pauses for thought and have all sorts of rhetorical tricks to bring drama to the driest content.
- TheHumanist 2y ago
  The most painful audiobooks I've found are the ones that are volunteer narrated. I think it was for Librivox or something like that? Holy hell it is bad every single time. But yes, there are some professional narrator that I am baffled as to how they get paid to narrate other audiobooks because they just cannot convey the story. It is such a disappointment when, as you mentioned, you are excited about a book and you run into one of those narrators.
maxglute 2y ago
As someone who consumes a lot of Hal-9000 and produced audio, I would say they diverge into very different experiences. Former, especially if you settle on a robot voice is almost like "reading", in that that you can learn to apply personal imagination over "neutral" audio. It can be more active. Latter is more experiencing, producer influences how you think about work based on voice casting / performance. It can be more passive. Caveate being I think more writers in future will hop on AI voice / audio production once technology matures, and you'll have creators personally direct "definitive" editions of how their audio is suppose to be experienced.
- samstave 2y ago
  In watching so many movies these days where the story simply cant be told without extensive CGI, and the fact that I personally, and likely many others are so tired of the crop of Human "celebrities" -- Its only a matter of time where I just ask for a full movie about a copelling story in a subject and World of my choosing and soon - if I want a Super awesome spy movie with lots of stealth and action and heists etc -- itll bea full bespoke movie experience. So in book, as you mention, an author will be able to define the full experience - and AI will allow people to select the stories and movie experience they want on demand.
  - maxglute 2y ago
    >AI will allow people to select the stories and movie experience they want on demand. Yeah there's a bunch of movies/show I'm not interested in watch but fascinated by aftershow content, i.e. all the game of thrones podcasts/recaps. It's interesting the variety you can get in a 5 minute recap, a 20 minute one, or a 2 hour one. There's alot of mid movies out there that I'm satisified with just the recap. Ditto with all the channels summarizing entire seasons of TV shows. I'm just waiting for a selectable X minute recap/summary/synopsis slider for content. Bonus choosing how recap is done, i.e. I really like game of throne wiki because it feels more like history book with drama stripped out / toned down.
    - samstave 2y ago
raybb 2y ago
Audm for scientific papers. Need some good time-stamping so it's easy for people to skip to the section they care about.
- pogue 2y ago
  I hunted around for Audm & it looks like it was shuttered over a year ago[1], if this is what you're talking about. But what you described for reading scientific papers sounds very interesting. Maybe someone can suggest alternatives? [1] https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/years-after-its-audm-acquisition-the-new-york-times-launches-its-own-audio-app/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/years-after-its-audm-acqui...
cube2222 2y ago
Yes! And books. Importantly, I want it to be a verbatim reading and mention e.g. in-between sections that "it's now reading an info box", or describe a picture, etc. I tried this by getting Claude to write the text (based on the pdf) and then putting that into elevenlabs for audio (quite expensive) and for what it's worth that worked quite great.
Vuska 2y ago
I've converted a few fan fictions into audiobooks using edge-tts (https://github.com/rany2/edge-tts https://github.com/rany2/edge-tts). It uses a reverse engineered API from MS Edge to use the more premium MS voices for free. A bit of a grey area, but it works remarkably well.
keksdev 2y ago
We are actually working on turning papers into audio books. Would appreciate any feedback: https://vocademic.com/ https://vocademic.com/

by nox101 2y ago

Fluorescence 2y ago

I have found huge gaps with how digestible different audiobooks are. It's so painful when there is a book I am really excited to listen to and find that I just can't. Maybe I just mentally drop out mid-sentence or the words float past without carrying any meaning and it can be difficult to pin down why. One aspect is the performance. An accent or an intonation can cause a nails on blackboard type revulsion. A morose, monotone or bored voice, ugh? For example, I just can't do any Scott Brick performance (which is pretty annoying given how prolific he is) because he trails off every sentence in this weird pitch change that doesn't match how any normal person speaks. It causes me this distressing mental dissonance because it's so disconnected to the passage being read. I suspect it's a result of him just reading out words blind and not talking like a human trying to communicate specific meanings and feelings. This is also the problem with robot voices - the difference between a joke, a question, an assertion, a doubt, sarcasm or self-delusion can all be in the intonation. With text you might pause and revoice a passage to catch a meaning but the conveyor belt of audio means the next words are upon you giving no chance for reflection. The place where I can handle a robot voice is when using it with the text in front of me. I quite like it as a pace setter. I still have my own internal voice giving flavour but gain some reading endurance when tired or the material is boring/dry and I keep mentally wandering off. The other aspect is the style of writing - some writing is delightful to read but awful to listen to. The parameters includes everything from sentence structure to vocabulary. A simple example is lists: perfect for quickly imbibing visually but can be maddening to hear read out. Same with numbers, or parentheticals or footnotes or... so I generally can't listen to anything technical. The most listenable things for me is anything in a conversational style. However, even dialogue dominated works can be torture when they use certain patterns of "he said"/"she said" directions that are effectively punctuation and silent when we read but overwhelming when voiced. A first-person diary style often fits with being spoken without changes. There is a probably an AI opportunity to rewrite books to more resemble radio plays that work better as voice performances. IMHO voicing technical works needs some brand new ideas. Real life conference talks that just narrate their paper are torture to sit through. Successfully engaging speakers use personality, humour, anecdotes and structure talks playfully with setup/reveals, hypotheticals, pauses for thought and have all sorts of rhetorical tricks to bring drama to the driest content.

TheHumanist 2y ago
The most painful audiobooks I've found are the ones that are volunteer narrated. I think it was for Librivox or something like that? Holy hell it is bad every single time. But yes, there are some professional narrator that I am baffled as to how they get paid to narrate other audiobooks because they just cannot convey the story. It is such a disappointment when, as you mentioned, you are excited about a book and you run into one of those narrators.

maxglute 2y ago

As someone who consumes a lot of Hal-9000 and produced audio, I would say they diverge into very different experiences. Former, especially if you settle on a robot voice is almost like "reading", in that that you can learn to apply personal imagination over "neutral" audio. It can be more active. Latter is more experiencing, producer influences how you think about work based on voice casting / performance. It can be more passive. Caveate being I think more writers in future will hop on AI voice / audio production once technology matures, and you'll have creators personally direct "definitive" editions of how their audio is suppose to be experienced.

samstave 2y ago
In watching so many movies these days where the story simply cant be told without extensive CGI, and the fact that I personally, and likely many others are so tired of the crop of Human "celebrities" -- Its only a matter of time where I just ask for a full movie about a copelling story in a subject and World of my choosing and soon - if I want a Super awesome spy movie with lots of stealth and action and heists etc -- itll bea full bespoke movie experience. So in book, as you mention, an author will be able to define the full experience - and AI will allow people to select the stories and movie experience they want on demand.
- maxglute 2y ago
  >AI will allow people to select the stories and movie experience they want on demand. Yeah there's a bunch of movies/show I'm not interested in watch but fascinated by aftershow content, i.e. all the game of thrones podcasts/recaps. It's interesting the variety you can get in a 5 minute recap, a 20 minute one, or a 2 hour one. There's alot of mid movies out there that I'm satisified with just the recap. Ditto with all the channels summarizing entire seasons of TV shows. I'm just waiting for a selectable X minute recap/summary/synopsis slider for content. Bonus choosing how recap is done, i.e. I really like game of throne wiki because it feels more like history book with drama stripped out / toned down.
  - samstave 2y ago

raybb 2y ago

Audm for scientific papers. Need some good time-stamping so it's easy for people to skip to the section they care about.

pogue 2y ago
I hunted around for Audm & it looks like it was shuttered over a year ago[1], if this is what you're talking about. But what you described for reading scientific papers sounds very interesting. Maybe someone can suggest alternatives? [1] https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/years-after-its-audm-acquisition-the-new-york-times-launches-its-own-audio-app/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/years-after-its-audm-acqui...

cube2222 2y ago

Yes! And books. Importantly, I want it to be a verbatim reading and mention e.g. in-between sections that "it's now reading an info box", or describe a picture, etc. I tried this by getting Claude to write the text (based on the pdf) and then putting that into elevenlabs for audio (quite expensive) and for what it's worth that worked quite great.

Vuska 2y ago

I've converted a few fan fictions into audiobooks using edge-tts (https://github.com/rany2/edge-tts https://github.com/rany2/edge-tts). It uses a reverse engineered API from MS Edge to use the more premium MS voices for free. A bit of a grey area, but it works remarkably well.

keksdev 2y ago

We are actually working on turning papers into audio books. Would appreciate any feedback: https://vocademic.com/ https://vocademic.com/