Audible Boosts AI-Narrated Audiobook Offerings with New Publisher Partnerships

Audible, Amazon’s audiobook platform, revealed on Tuesday a collaboration with select publishers to transform print and e-books into AI-narrated audiobooks. This move is designed to rapidly grow its library amid competition with Apple, Spotify, and other players in the booming audiobook industry.

Audible is tapping into Amazon’s AI technology to support publishers in creating audiobooks. Publishers can select from over 100 AI-generated voices in English, French, Spanish, and Italian, with various accents and dialects. The company aims to further expand these voice options in the future.

Audible also plans to launch a beta AI translation feature later this year, providing text-to-text and speech-to-speech translation services. This will enable translations from English to Spanish, French, Italian, and German, with publishers able to enlist professional linguists to ensure translation accuracy, the company stated.

In 2023, Amazon rolled out an invite-only beta virtual voice tool for self-published U.S. authors, allowing them to turn e-books into audiobooks using synthetic speech technology. Last year, Audible invited audiobook narrators to train AI models with their voices.

A search for “virtual voice” on Audible shows over 50,000 titles marked as “Narrated By: Virtual Voice,” suggesting strong adoption among authors lacking resources to produce audiobooks independently.

Despite its popularity, AI-generated narration has sparked discussion in the publishing world and among listeners. Some critics worry that these AI-driven recordings could diminish audiobook quality.

Spotify, the second-largest audiobook platform after Audible, has also embraced AI narration tools, partnering with AI audio provider ElevenLabs in February.

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