Comment by russellbeattie
3 days ago
Audible has already flooded their store with generated audio books. Go to the "Plus Catalog" and it's filled with them. The quality at the moment is complete trash, but I can't imagine it won't get better quickly.
The whole audiobook business will eventually disappear - probably within the decade. There will only be ebooks and on-device AI assistants will read it to you on demand.
I imagine it'll go like this: First pre-generated audiobooks as audio files. Next, online service to generate audio on demand with hyper customizable voices which can be downloaded. Next, a new ebook format which embeds instructions for narration and pronunciation to be read on-device. Finally, AI that's good enough to read it like a storyteller instantly without hints.
> There will only be ebooks and on-device AI assistants will read it to you on demand.
Honestly I read (or rather, listen to) a lot of books already by getting the epubs onto my phone then using a very basic TTS to read it out. Yes, they're definitely not as lifelike as even the most common AI TTS systems but they're good enough to listen to at high speed. Moon+ Reader is pretty good for Android, not sure about iOS.