Why isn't the audiobook market strong enough that it would make business sense to pay good narrators and actors for each book published?
Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
111–120 of 255 posts
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#112All these AI text to voice models seem to ignore emotion. It always sounds like a robot.
Emotion is the acting part of voice acting. Hard to copy with AI
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess this is still very useful if you are blind.
Yeah, for accessibility purposes on things that aren't already narrated, this is kind of thing is huge.
I was just thinking about automatically slapping an mp3 on every blog post, just an accessibility nicety.
Can someone with low vision tell me if this would be useful to them? It may be that specialist tools already do this better.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that the printing press was the root cause for the century of religious wars that soaked Europe with blood, and was key in the revolutions that overthrown absolute monarchies all over Europe, I don't think it's as good as an example as you think it is. Death of a civilization doesn't mean disappearance of mankind or even overall regression on the long term.
Do you have a source for that? I don't think the printing press was the cause of religious wars any more than bullets were the cause of WWII
Have you heard of the Protestant Reformation and the following 120 years of war? The entire Protestant Catholic blow up that consumed Europe was pretty directly attributable to the printing press.
(To be clear, nothing is solely and exclusively caused by any one thing. Causality is a very fuzzy concept. But sans printing press, those wars certainly wouldn’t have happened when/where/how they did, if they ever happened at all).
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#115I'm not able to try it until later, but regarding the sample audio: The voice quality is quite good, but what's going on with all the random pauses between words? It's very Captain Kirk.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#116I 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.
Boox Ultra Tab whatever the fuck (their product naming sucks) + Readwise Reader = amazing for this
Not quite seamless but it works. It has a cursor that follows the words as they’re spoken to, which allows you to read and hear (“immersive reading”) which I find to be extremely helpful for maintaining focus.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that the printing press was the root cause for the century of religious wars that soaked Europe with blood, and was key in the revolutions that overthrown absolute monarchies all over Europe, I don't think it's as good as an example as you think it is. Death of a civilization doesn't mean disappearance of mankind or even overall regression on the long term.
Do you have a source for that? I don't think the printing press was the cause of religious wars any more than bullets were the cause of WWII
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Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
By that time, AI will beat the toppest of the top enders. Remember the time Deep Blue barely beat Kasparov? Now no human, or group of humans can beat a chess engine, even one that runs on an iPhone.
I don’t think chess is a good example of AI destroying the path to the top. Chess is more popular now and humans keep advancing even though it is futile effort against computers.
And people are better at chess now in part because of practicing with/against machines. But chess has never been something you can make a living off of unless you were at the very top.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bingo. AI is going to destroy any pathway for training and accruing experience. An embalming tech for our dying civilization.
Just like printing presses killed the profession of copying books by hand, eliminating the training pathway for illuminated manuscripts. Death of civilization itself I say, damn those printing presses.
There's a big difference.
Printing presses produce superior products.
A mediocre audiobook is certainly better than no audiobook at all, but it is an inferior product to a well produced audiobook.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, for accessibility purposes on things that aren't already narrated, this is kind of thing is huge.
I was just thinking about automatically slapping an mp3 on every blog post, just an accessibility nicety. Can someone with low vision tell me if this would be useful to them? It may be that specialist tools already do this better.
People use screen readers for accessibility. I would not expect anyone to be able to "look for and find" your mp3... I would instead expect them to use the tool they normally use for accessibility.
The real question is "what tools are they already using and how can I make sure those tools are providing higher quality output?". There are standards in browsers for these kinds of things (ways to hint navigation via accessibility tools for example).