Amazon’s Audible has announced that it’s planning to expand its audiobook catalog by giving select publishers access to its new “fully integrated, end-to-end AI production technology” that will let them more easily convert titles to audiobooks with their choice of AI-generated voices. The initiative will also help expand global access to audiobooks with the introduction of a new AI translation tool that’s expected to launch in an early beta later this year.
Audible says its new AI narration technology leverages Amazon’s advanced AI capabilities and will be made available to interested publishing partners in the coming months in one of two ways. For publishers wanting to be hands-off, an end-to-end service managed by Audible handles the “entire audiobook production process” right up to publication, while a self-service option will give publishers access to the same tools so they can independently direct the entire production process.
With both options, publishers are able to “choose from a quickly growing and improving selection of more than 100 AI-generated voices across English, Spanish, French, and Italian with multiple accent and dialect options, and will be able to access voice upgrades for their titles as our technology evolves,” according to Amazon.
Last September, Amazon invited a select group of Audible narrators to train AI-generated voice clones of themselves ahead of the launch of this new service. The company said that if their AI voice replica was selected for a project, the narrators would be able to review the final audiobook for errors or inaccuracies and use the platform’s production tools to fine-tune pronunciations or adjust the pacing of their voice.
Audible’s upcoming AI translation tools will also be limited to select publishers, and will initially support translations from English to Spanish, French, Italian and German. As with audiobook production, publishers will be offered two different approaches. Text-to-text translation for manuscripts which can be later turned into audiobooks, and speech-to-speech translation which uses AI to preserve the “original narrators’ voice and style across languages.”
Publishers will also be able to review translations themselves or opt for a human review through Audible with a professional linguist.
