31–40 of 54 posts
I am really satisfied with snipd.com when it comes to podcasts and AI processing.
I keep wishing they would buy Audible ;)
I am really satisfied with snipd.com when it comes to podcasts and AI processing.
Interestingly, I know several people what would like AI to read stuff to them and read it to them in an interesting way (not Hal-9000 ish) One friend wants conference papers turned into audio. Another wants fan-fiction read dramatically.
It's so painful when there is a book I am really excited to listen to and find that I just can't. Maybe I just mentally drop out mid-sentence or the words float past without carrying any meaning and it can be difficult to pin down why.
One aspect is the performance. An accent or an intonation can cause a nails on blackboard type revulsion. A morose, monotone or bored voice, ugh? For example, I just can't do any Scott Brick performance (which is pretty annoying given how prolific he is) because he trails off every sentence in this weird pitch change that doesn't match how any normal person speaks. It causes me this distressing mental dissonance because it's so disconnected to the passage being read. I suspect it's a result of him just reading out words blind and not talking like a human trying to communicate specific meanings and feelings.
This is also the problem with robot voices - the difference between a joke, a question, an assertion, a doubt, sarcasm or self-delusion can all be in the intonation. With text you might pause and revoice a passage to catch a meaning but the conveyor belt of audio means the next words are upon you giving no chance for reflection. The place where I can handle a robot voice is when using it with the text in front of me. I quite like it as a pace setter. I still have my own internal voice giving flavour but gain some reading endurance when tired or the material is boring/dry and I keep mentally wandering off.
The other aspect is the style of writing - some writing is delightful to read but awful to listen to. The parameters includes everything from sentence structure to vocabulary. A simple example is lists: perfect for quickly imbibing visually but can be maddening to hear read out. Same with numbers, or parentheticals or footnotes or... so I generally can't listen to anything technical.
The most listenable things for me is anything in a conversational style. However, even dialogue dominated works can be torture when they use certain patterns of "he said"/"she said" directions that are effectively punctuation and silent when we read but overwhelming when voiced. A first-person diary style often fits with being spoken without changes. There is a probably an AI opportunity to rewrite books to more resemble radio plays that work better as voice performances.
IMHO voicing technical works needs some brand new ideas. Real life conference talks that just narrate their paper are torture to sit through. Successfully engaging speakers use personality, humour, anecdotes and structure talks playfully with setup/reveals, hypotheticals, pauses for thought and have all sorts of rhetorical tricks to bring drama to the driest content.
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Yes, I am planning to implement this feature. In the future, there will be more AI-related features, such as AI recommendations, support for more languages, and a more versatile podcast knowledge chatbot.
As a pocketcast lifer, I wish you success. Does Are you aware of listennotes who transcribes $1+0.06c per minute? I like the idea of 50 transcriptions per months, but there's like 30m podcasts and 3 hour podcasts. Eitherway feels like there's ~5 years where AI podcast have good subscription market before device side transcription/translation/natural voice. Hope you grow big before then.
I haven't followed listennotes' transcription feature, I'll check it out. I've tried their catalog and search API, and many popular Chinese podcasts are not included.
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I wouldn’t (worry). I’ve downloaded a file to my local device. Sue me for doing something to it before I ingest it. ;-)
Not sure why this is downvoted. Ad blockers aren't illegal, no one has the obligation to listen to ads without skipping it. This isn't really controversial on HN.
Interestingly, I know several people what would like AI to read stuff to them and read it to them in an interesting way (not Hal-9000 ish) One friend wants conference papers turned into audio. Another wants fan-fiction read dramatically.
Audm for scientific papers. Need some good time-stamping so it's easy for people to skip to the section they care about.
But what you described for reading scientific papers sounds very interesting. Maybe someone can suggest alternatives?
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/years-after-its-audm-acqui...
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what are you listening to podcasts on that it's not easy to skip ads? I'm using Downcast. It's a fairly old app. I think it defaults to +30s +2m -30s buttons which IIRC are settable. It's trivial to skip the ads. I don't need AI to solve that.
Usually I'm listening to podcast when doing dishes, or grocery shopping, at the gym, or on a walk. I don't really want to have to take up my phone to skip an ad, and the controls on the headphones are too janky. This would definitely be a killer feature for me.
The killer feature for using AI on podcasts is automatic ad blocking. You get that working folks will pay $5/mo for that alone.
Interestingly, I know several people what would like AI to read stuff to them and read it to them in an interesting way (not Hal-9000 ish) One friend wants conference papers turned into audio. Another wants fan-fiction read dramatically.
I have found huge gaps with how digestible different audiobooks are. It's so painful when there is a book I am really excited to listen to and find that I just can't. Maybe I just mentally drop out mid-sentence or the words float past without carrying any meaning and it can be difficult to pin down why. One aspect is the performance. An accent or an intonation can cause a nails on blackboard type revulsion. A morose,…
But yes, there are some professional narrator that I am baffled as to how they get paid to narrate other audiobooks because they just cannot convey the story. It is such a disappointment when, as you mentioned, you are excited about a book and you run into one of those narrators.