"We're taking measured steps to test new technologies to help expand our catalog," says the post, "and this week we are inviting a small group of narrators to participate in a US-only beta enabling them to create and monetize replicas of their own voices using AI-generated speech technology."
Still, this might seem a tad incongruous with Audible's current approach to narrated audiobooks, given that even after this announcement, ACX's submission requirements still say that audiobook narrations, "must be narrated by a human." But Amazon has already been bullish on AI."
Right now the Audible program is limited, with a select group of narrators participating. But it's easy to see where this could go from here, and soon Audible could be opened up to let any author capable of generating an AI voice that can read their own book.
Other companies are playing in this space as well; the startup Rebind is enlisting authors to allow their voices to be cloned so an AI version of them can "guide" readers through.
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