As someone that hates the whole of tech industry in general, take this for what it's worth! #AI is text to speech, just with unnaturally huge processing power behind generating these voices and generating how they will say things, etc. Virtual Voice is something Audible chose to call their particular brand of voice, probably because it would possibly be better received then calling it AI narrator or something like that. It's an absolute insult to audiobook listeners like myself. For one thing, AI narrated/virtual voice books aren't free, so there's absolutely no way I'm paying for one of these things, at all. For another, my screen reader, which is on device, is easier to listen to. It's faster. I can highlight text in an EBook. I can speed up the reading with less distortion. I can switch voices on the fly if I wanted. I can even change punctuation level anouncements if I want. With my screen reader, I am in control. With whatever Audible is doing, I have very little control at all, but that's not even the reason why I listen to audiobooks in the first place. When I listen to a book, I want to be taken on a journey and I want that human narrator to give me an experience as they read. I know, strange concept right!

It's not just about the text, although, that's a big part of it too! But I wanna sit down with a loved narrator and I want them to tell me a story for hours and hours and hours. I want them to show me how they feel about a scene by the slight intonation in their voice.

These higher powered AI voices try to be emotional, but it just comes across as really really really obvious this is TTS/AI after a while.

For a breakdown, you can read about the prices and stuff here.

https://daisy.org/news-events/articles/ai-text-to-speech-cost-comparison/

I have my favorite audiobook narrators. I even spoken to a few of them recently over Zoom and they were so overjoyed that they basically grew up with me. They were in my ears from an early age. Without them, I wouldn't care about stories and literature as deeply as I do. I told them, sincerely, thank you for bringing worlds and characters to life for me. They were so touched.

With an AI narrator, I'll never have that connection, ever. I'll just be experiencing the words and if I wanted to do that, I'd just read the eBook.

It's super frustrating because this isn't making audiobooks cheaper. It isn't making narrators get paid more. It's just a way to push out content just because authors are afraid of creative solutions such as creative commons to get their audiobooks made. Audible knows this, and are capitalizing on the fact that narrators are these expensive sacks of flesh. It's so disgusting, but corporations gonna corporation.

@zersiax @JessMahler#Audiobook#Audiobooks