I stopped running the numbers because I found a way to remove them.

But I look at new releases every single week. Normally there are maybe 3-4k audiobooks released. The week I wrote this there were 15k with 12k of them AI. Each week after it was basically doubling the amount of audiobooks and the Virtual Voice program was (and I think still is in beta – so not even available to all authors).

It feels that way because friends of mine are narrators and there is no reason to produce a book via AI. It’s not something that anyone asked for. It’s just Amazon looking to make more money.

Literally a year ago if you tried to publish anything on Audible with AI narration they would instantly block it. Now they welcome it with open arms?

There are options for indie authors to get audiobooks produced that aren’t AI. I literally just had a conversation with an author about this last week.

Thank you for stopping my palpitations at the thought of losing the chance to listen to books being performed rather than droned. I’m a UK subscriber & there is no way I would continue paying Audible for AI voice overs.

As a writer, I think it’s cool to convert my years of work into an audio format in a matter of days not weeks. I like having the option of possibly creating audiobooks of my work in different languages. For a good percentage of most books, you cannot tell the difference between an AI voice and a real narrator. I have to admit, however, that I have not yet listened to an entire book done by an AI voice.

Here is where I see things going. Any narrator can use their own voice in an AI voice production. It won’t be long before a narrator can create additional AI voices for specific characters, either by using their own voice or other AI voices. It won’t be long before you’ll have the ability to adjust tone, inflection, and audio levels. It won’t be long before narrators will have a library of special effects to add to their narration. It’s still their voice. Instead of losing money, this could be an opportunity to create a whole new business model, where you offer an AI voice production that includes multiple voices and special effects to enhance the listening experience. Say there is a scene involving a murder. How hard will it be to add the sound of a gunshot to the scene, or the sound of an ambulance or police siren. Yes, you can do that now. But it may be easier and faster using AI.

I’ve been using AI almost daily for the past several months. It’s not going away. I say embrace the technology, learn how to use it, and see what opportunities are on the horizon.

Technically, AI can already read aloud any kindle ebook via Alexa. And she doesn’t do a bad job. The only problem with this is that the author doesn’t get any income from that added feature.

I’m a huge audiobook fan, and I have a very large collection of audiobooks. I only resort to Alexa when I can’t get an audiobook with a real person doing the narrating.