You choose an audiobook to listen to. You press “play,” and the voice of a woman named Madison begins to tell the story.
This probably doesn’t sound like an unusual situation. But Madison isn’t real. And Jackson, Helena and Mitchell — Apple’s new artificial intelligence (AI) audiobook narrators — aren’t either.
The company has released a collection of audiobooks that are narrated by digital voices, but sound like human narrators.
On its website, Apple explains that it wants to help small authors and publishers publish audiobooks, which are usually quite difficult and expensive to produce.
For now, the service is only available in English, and for romance and fiction books.
Authors who want to use it can send their book to one of Apple’s two audiobook publishing partners. If accepted, the audiobook will be ready for release on Apple Books within two months, the company said.
With Apple’s announcement, some are concerned that AI narrators might one day completely replace human narrators.
But others believe that while this new technology will change the world of audiobooks in some ways, human storytelling has value that cannot be replaced by digital voice.
“That’s not what clients want to listen to,” Carly Watters, who is part of the Professional Association of Canadian Literary Agents, told The Guardian.
According to the Audio Publishers Association of New York, sales of audiobooks have risen sharply over the past ten years. A study carried out in 2022 shows a 25% increase in 2021 alone.