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Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

claudio.uk

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Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#221

Post by skwee357 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #220
skwee357 wrote: post #212

Soon, AI will flood the market with mediocre everything: books, audio books, art, movies, websites. The saddest thing is that people will still continue to participate in consuming these AI produced “goods”.

I think the saddest thing is that it's highly likely that real people will start to produce aesthetics that look/sound/etc like AI slop

True, and I think with the recent news around Sporify using AI to fill their playlists, we are already getting there. Just need to condition the public that there is no better

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#222

Post by cmdtab »

j4coh wrote: post #64
stavros wrote: post #48

Earlier 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.

The value of distribution is increasing while the value of content and product is decreasing for all but the top end.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#223

Post by CuriouslyC »

j4coh wrote: post #64
stavros wrote: post #48

Earlier 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.

It's common for shows to use big name actors as voices because they draw an audience, nothing will change. Just means a smaller pool of voice actors and they'll mostly be good looking.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#224

Post by fidelramos »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #119
lupusreal wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some people will learn to use these AIs to make top-quality audiobooks (and books, movies, TV shows, comics...). It will be a more manual process than pressing a button, but still orders of magnitude less than what it took before. As a result there will be a tsunami or high-quality content.

There will be curation and specialization. Previously ignored niches now will be economically profitable. It will be a Renaissance of creativity, and millions of jobs will be created.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#225

Post by chairmansteve »

turnsout wrote: post #152
littlestymaar wrote: post #87

Earlier 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.

Those revolutions were ultimately positive. The alternative would be the continued rule by monarchs and a single powerful religion

No comfort to the millions who died though.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#226

Post by sysworld »

Finally! Been trying all the TTS models popping up on here for ages, and they've all been pretty average, or not work on Mac, or only work on really short text, or be reeealy slow.

But this one works pretty quick, is easy to install, has some passible voices. Finally I can start listening to those books that have no audio version.

I'm a slow reader, so don't read many books. If a book doesn't have an audiobook version, chances are I won't read it.

PS, I have used elevenlabs in the past for some small TTS projects, but for a full book, it's price prohibitive for personal use. (elevenlabs has some amazing voices)

Thank you to the dev/s who worked on this!

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#228

Post by azeirah »

aredox wrote: post #76
j4coh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We'll be ok lol, while it is a significant transition, it IS just a transition in the media landscape.

AI is big and significant, but we'll be ok. There is also no such "one" thing as "our civilisation". We're deeply interconnected extremely vast and complex interconnected networks of ever-changing relationships.

AI does indeed represent the commoditisation of things we used to really value like "craftsmanship in book narration" and "intelligence". But we've had commoditisations of similar media in the past.

Paper used to be extremely expensive, but as time went on, it became more and more commoditised.

Memory used to be extremely expensive (2000-3000 years ago, we needed to encode memory in _dance_, _stories_ and _plays_. Holy shit). Now you can purchase enough memory to store a billion books for maybe two hours of labor.

Most of these things don't really matter. What is happening is that the media landscape is significantly shifting, and that is a tale as old as history.

I do think the intellectual class will be affected the most. People who understand this shift stand to benefit enormously, while those who don't _might_ end up in a super awful super low class.

And yet, all of that doesn't really matter if you just move to, I dunno, Paramaribo or whatever. The people there are pragmatic and friendly. They don't care about AI too much. Or maybe New Zealand, or Iceland, or Peru, or Nepal or I don't know.

The world isn't ending. Civilisation isn't being destroyed at our core.

The media landscape is changing, classes are shifting, power-relationships are changing. I suggest you think deeply about where you want to live, what you stand for and what is most important to you in life.

I don't need money or tech to be happy. I am fine with just my cats, my closest friends and family and healthy food.

If it happens to be the case that I need to leave tech or that extremely high-end narrated audiobooks cease to exist? Then all I have to say is "oh no, anyway".

We'll be fine. One way or another.

Just different.

Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M

#230

Post by freefaler »

figers wrote: post #205
freefaler wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for ios you use Kybook on your iphone and your ipad. It syncs positions between the devices. When you go for a walk, opens Kybook, start TTS. When back home, open your tablet, you'll see the page TTS has stopped reading to.

How does this compare to using Apple's iBook or Kindle reader app and then the iPhone's built in text to voice (the female British voice is pretty good).

On iOS it is the same voice.
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