I’m sure they sound more natural, but honestly, the text to speech built into my Kindle more than 10 years ago was good enough. Of course, Amazon killed that off because it would cannibalise sales to Audible.
Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
241–250 of 255 posts
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#242For anyone looking for an easier alternative (and one without the bugs the author describes, such as skipping some prefaces or failing to detect some chapters), Voice Dream Reader on iOS (and macOS) handles .epub and other e-books just fine and supports a variety of built-in and external voices.
ElevenLabs Reader is the same thing, but much higher quality voices for free. I've lost my place a few times so it's not quite as reliable as VoiceDream. But you aren't paying an expensive subscription with mediocre voices.
It is free at the moment. They clearly specify in their terms that it won't be completely free in the future. The price of their same product if accessed from the web is $100/month for the amount (barely) sufficient for book reading. It may be smarter to skip until they reveal their official pricing for the mobile app.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#243For anyone looking for an easier alternative (and one without the bugs the author describes, such as skipping some prefaces or failing to detect some chapters), Voice Dream Reader on iOS (and macOS) handles .epub and other e-books just fine and supports a variety of built-in and external voices.
There are many apps. Voice Dream isn't up to date with voice quality (which was amazing 10 years ago when it started, but now even Apple gives you voices of similar quality for free), but is up to date with prices.
Here is a detailed comparison chart I have made that tracks over 100 features across most popular apps: https://speechcentral.net/speech-central-vs-voice-dream-read...
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, by my ear it was pretty clearly not SJ’s voice-likeness, although there were some superficial similarities. But some people could have mistook it due to some regional accent similarities, though it would be akin to interpretation of any light southern drawl with a similar timbre as being SJ.
They also asked her for permission in advance, which was never going to help their case.
lol yeah. That made it look like anything vaguely similar would be an attempt to model SJ, and triggered due diligence by her legal team. Not filing at that point would be de facto precedent that SJ did not lay claim to her voice likeness.
Sounds like SJ has a better legal team that OAI did.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 boo…
That sure is some naivety ya got there. But good luck on the move. Keep your friends and family close.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#246I 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.
iOS Voice Dream Reader. First app I install on a new iPhone since 2010 I believe. I will even cut and scan physical books just so I can read them in the app. The story of the guy who made it is also interesting!
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#247This looks incredible! I’ve had an idea simmering in the back of my mind for a while now: creating an audiobook from an ebook for my commute using the voice of a specific audiobook narrator I really enjoy. The concept struck me after coming across the Infinite Conversation project here on HN. Unfortunately, I just haven’t found the time to bring it to life yet. :(
Made this for my kids for Christmas:
- take an ebook in any language - AI translates it to German - AI speaks it using the voice of their fav narrator - a UI showing the text as it is being read
Now they can read Asimov, Kulansky, Bryson, regardless of whether a translation or audio version exists. :)
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Do you know Hussites? [1] The Hussite Wars (1419–1434) predate printing press and Luther told: "We are all Hussites without knowing it."
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Usually, though, errors are corrected and every every printing has fewer errors than the previous one.
What percentage of books get a second print run on a printing press? And what's the process for that? Do they have to reset each word for the second run? I genuinely don't know how a physical process like typesetting can result in increased accuracy on each print.
Any interesting book gets a second print run - except if it was on purpose a limited edition with some exceptional quirk.
Re: Generate audiobooks from E-books with Kokoro-82M
#250On the one hand, this is very convenient. Probably cool for some non-fiction. On the other, some of my favorite audio books all stood out because the narrator was interpreting the text really well, for example by changing the pacing during chaotic moments. Or those audiobooks with multiple narrators and different voices for each character. Not to mention that sometimes the only cue you get for who's speaking during d…
On the other hand, there are a lot of narrators who are just bad, and the publisher is not going to pay for an alternate narration. These tools are a good way to re-narrate Wil Wheaton narrated books with correct pronunciation and inflection, for example.
Computer chess took a long time to get better than the best players in the world, but it was better than most chess players for many years before that. We're seeing that a lot with these generative models.