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Apple Books digital narration

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Re: Apple Books digital narration

#31

Post by pmontra »

bongobingo1 wrote: post #6

Will we see this level of voice synthesis in the public domain? Maybe I am out of touch but I found those examples very impressive - more impressive than the jobs vs rogan demo a few months back. But I am also saddened at a future where all this is locked up in corporate hands - obviously there is money needed and (licensed) data needed too which Apple can get at. Honestly I would rather eschew the ethics of it and j…

Not from the companies selling audiobooks IMHO.

They will use this technology to save money on human speakers. If they release it into the public domain we'll end up with ebooks that can read themselves aloud and they'll lose part of the incomes from audio books.

My Samsung phone can read ebooks with one of Samsung's voices right now, but it does an awful job at pauses. Basically, no commas. With a good voice I could turn each one of my ebooks in an audiobook.

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#33

Post by raverbashing »

csande17 wrote: post #8

The "Helena" sample contains a pretty good test case of this system's ability to guess where emphasis and pauses go: > I know Bill carried within him deep currents of spiritual yearning that he found easiest to express through the beauty he saw in all places wild. (I checked in an online sample of the ebook: there is no punctuation in this sentence.) Unfortunately the AI completely faceplants, placing an enormous pau…

And might I add, Helena does not sound like a Soprano given the speech tone. (Also, smoking is bad mmmmkay)

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#34

Post by kzrdude »

lvl102 wrote: post #5

I am surprised it’s taking so long for big tech companies to roll this out. I suppose there’s too much money in audiobooks? Perhaps licensing issues? If anyone can get a “celebrity reads aloud” feature that would be Apple and that could be big.

The quality needs to be very high for it not to be jarring. I stay with podcasts if the host has a "good radio voice". ("Not even all human voices are good enough for me.") It's just a very intimate medium to have someone's voice right in your head. If the voices have annoying quirks, those audiobooks will not be loved.

Yes, it needs to be tens of hours of perfectly good narration.

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#35

Post by jjcm »

TacWitch wrote: post #32

Mitchell sounds exactly like Ray Porter. I wonder if he trained a model with them or they did it without his direct approval

I reached out to him on Twitter [0] asking exactly this.

According to a Reddit comment [1] it is, but they haven’t posted their source.

[0] https://twitter.com/pwnies/status/1610857711008370688?s=46&t...

[1] https://reddit.com/r/apple/comments/103iogu/_/j305eby/?conte...

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#36

Post by tinus_hn »

BuckyBeaver wrote: post #16

"Digitally narrated titles are a valuable complement to professionally narrated audiobooks" Yeah, right. What a lame attempt to deflect the (fully warranted) criticism that this will put audiobook narrators out of work.

This is as valid a criticism as complaining the phonograph will put musicians out if work. Time marches on, adapt.

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#38

Post by CubsFan1060 »

jjcm wrote: post #35
TacWitch wrote: post #32

Mitchell sounds exactly like Ray Porter. I wonder if he trained a model with them or they did it without his direct approval

I reached out to him on Twitter [0] asking exactly this. According to a Reddit comment [1] it is, but they haven’t posted their source. [0] https://twitter.com/pwnies/status/1610857711008370688?s=46&t... [1] https://reddit.com/r/apple/comments/103iogu/_/j305eby/?conte...

I don’t think you got the correct Ray Porter.

Correct one is https://twitter.com/Ray__Porter

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#39

Post by shrx »

bentley wrote: post #20
shrx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was killed by publishers who wanted to charge separately for audiobooks. Any sources on this?

Amazon decides Kindle speech isn’t worth copyright fight (2009) — https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/03/amazon-backs-off-on-... See also the recent lawsuit covering the other direction, automatic transcription of Audible books. https://www.geekwire.com/2020/amazon-owned-audible-major-pub...

Thanks. I never really used Kindle Speech on my 3G Kindle, but was curious why it was suddenly gone in later versions.

Re: Apple Books digital narration

#40

Post by Maursault »

TacWitch wrote: post #32

Mitchell sounds exactly like Ray Porter. I wonder if he trained a model with them or they did it without his direct approval

> Mitchell sounds exactly like Ray Porter.

"Mitchell sounds like Ray Porter" is more accurate. Accent is completely different, so they don't sound exactly alike. My first impression was that Mitchell sounds like a Clay Jenkinson,[1] but more a cross between Jenkinson and a male newscaster I can't place who is probably retired now, but who also narrated documentaries.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8UoL0AOL3k&t=1m49s

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