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Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
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Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#72Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#73The word “kokoro” means “heart” in Japanese, which I learned making the (heart shaped and paperback) puzzle books at https://www.kakurokokoro.com/
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#74I would love to have an e-reader that allows me to switch between text and audio at the press of a button. Imagine reading your book on the couch and then switching into audio mode while doing the dishes seamlessly, by connecting bluetooth headphones.
Kindles used to provide this feature, but publishers and/or the Authors Guild stopped it, because audio rights and text rights are handled differently. In other words, when Amazon sells you a text book, it does not have the right to then also do TTS on that text and let you listen to it. There's some contemporary discussion of what happened here: https://tidbits.com/2009/03/02/why-the-kindle-2-should-speak... I think…
I used that TTS feature semi-regularly on a Kindle 2.
It wasn't a good experience but it was nice to be able to keep 'reading' a book while I was exercising.
It worked for me for over a decade, until I broke the device. I don't know if I never updated the firmware or if the fact I used Calibre to convert books bypassed the feature gate.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#75Can it also translate? I have family who would like audiobooks in German but most are in English only.
german is not listed as a supported language, so no. aside from that, i would not want to use computer translation. unlike TTS, which keeps getting better, translation quality still leaves a lot to be desired.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On the other, some of my favorite audio books all stood out because the narrator was interpreting the text really well This (and everything else with AI) isn't saying "you don't need good actors any more". It's saying "if you don't have an audiobook, you can make a mediocre one automatically". AI (text, images, videos, whatever) doesn't replace the top end, it replaces the entire bottom-to-middle end.
RIP to future top-enders that would normally have started out on the bottom to middle end.
Bingo. AI is going to destroy any pathway for training and accruing experience.
An embalming tech for our dying civilization.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> On the other, some of my favorite audio books all stood out because the narrator was interpreting the text really well This (and everything else with AI) isn't saying "you don't need good actors any more". It's saying "if you don't have an audiobook, you can make a mediocre one automatically". AI (text, images, videos, whatever) doesn't replace the top end, it replaces the entire bottom-to-middle end.
RIP to future top-enders that would normally have started out on the bottom to middle end.
[deleted]
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#78I would love to have an e-reader that allows me to switch between text and audio at the press of a button. Imagine reading your book on the couch and then switching into audio mode while doing the dishes seamlessly, by connecting bluetooth headphones.
It is a supported feature in the epub 3.0 standard. It's possible to distribute an epub with audio, and have the audio sync to the HTML elements that form the ebook's text. And there is an e-reader that actually supports this feature, I can't remember which one now but it should be possible to find it with Google.
It's more of an open problem how to create those epubs. I have some code that can do it using Elevenlabs audio, but I imagine it way harder to have something similar for a human narrator.... who's going to do the sync? Maybe we need a sync AI.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, for accessibility purposes on things that aren't already narrated, this is kind of thing is huge.
that's the thing. it's not just for accessibility. anything not already narrated is a fair target for TTS. i don't have time to sit down and read books. all reading is done on the go, while getting around or doing daily routines at home. i have a small book that i am reading now, which should take a few hours to finish, but in the time i manage to get done reading it i will probably have listened to two or three audi…
You don't choose to spend your time reading books. You probably roll your eyes when someone tells you they don't have time for some activity you deem valuable. This is the 'no time to exercise' debate in a different shape.
They are also different activities, with audio it's easier to listen to more but retention is usually lower. Not casting any elitist "you need to read" bullshit by the way, but find it odd to define it in terms of lack of time, and I really like both mediums.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#80I would for sure not want this for fiction, it's too obvious that the voice has no understanding whatsoever of the text, but it's probably pretty nice for converting short news texts or notifications to audio.
Your point is a valid one, but I want to add to it that it is also a matter of expectations and how one listens. Years ago, when I was dating someone who spoke Russian as one of her native languages, we had to do a funny compromise when watching films together with her parents: they didn't speak a word of English, so we'd use the Russian dub with English subtitles. I noticed that the Russian dub was just one man read…
Watching these as russian/english bilingual is very painful, tho I grew up in western world so maybe I'm just not used to it.
To add on a slight tangent. Many books/audiobooks just don't exist in other languages at all. So even getting some monotone is a lot better than getting nothing.
I think this is where these models really shine. Cheaply creating cross language media and unlocking the knowledge/media to underprivileged parts of the world.