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The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

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Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#11

Post by low_tech_love »

didntcheck wrote: post #4

See also: Librivox [1], for public-domain audio books read by actual humans [1] https://librivox.org/

Are you a specist? Why should we value more an audiobook that's read by a human?

Sorry, just joking. But here's a reason: these things were not quality-checked at all. Click on Moon Voyage by Jules Verne and be greeted with a very human-like voice reading an numbered list of "other works by the author" in an extremely awkward fashion that's probably caused by how the .TXT file is organized.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#12

Post by The_suffocated »

Great news. It seems there is still much room for improvement, though. E.g. in “A Short History of the World” by H. G. Wells, the AI reads Darius I and Charles V as “Darius Eye” and “Charles Vee”. Open and closed brackets in sentences are not read out. The intonation is also a bit unnatural. But it is intelligent enough to parse 1,782 as 1782 rather than two numbers.

Another problem is that the audio clips are not broken into sessions. There is no way to locate the beginning of a chapter, for instance.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#13

Post by low_tech_love »

pjmlp wrote: post #6

Yet another example on how jobs will go away, goodbye voice actors.

I am an avid consumer of audiobooks and I will never pay/listen to anything AI-generated. Maybe it's just me, I don't know, but just because they have shown that it is technically feasible, that doesn't mean that there is a market for it. I am skeptical. Listening to audiobooks is already a compromise over reading the book, listening to an AI-generated audiobook sounds to me like a bit too much. But let's see.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#14

Post by low_tech_love »

The_suffocated wrote: post #12

Great news. It seems there is still much room for improvement, though. E.g. in “A Short History of the World” by H. G. Wells, the AI reads Darius I and Charles V as “Darius Eye” and “Charles Vee”. Open and closed brackets in sentences are not read out. The intonation is also a bit unnatural. But it is intelligent enough to parse 1,782 as 1782 rather than two numbers. Another problem is that the audio clips are not br…

I noticed the same, especially when some kind of structure text (like a bullet point or numbered list) comes in.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#15

Post by eole666 »

pjmlp wrote: post #6

Yet another example on how jobs will go away, goodbye voice actors.

For now, actual voice actors make audiobooks listening way more enjoyable. Those AI voices are convincing but lack the soul, emotions and art direction of actual voice acting. Think about listening to a book for 8 hours with a monotonous AI voice reading it...

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#17

Post by [deleted] »

The_suffocated wrote: post #12

Great news. It seems there is still much room for improvement, though. E.g. in “A Short History of the World” by H. G. Wells, the AI reads Darius I and Charles V as “Darius Eye” and “Charles Vee”. Open and closed brackets in sentences are not read out. The intonation is also a bit unnatural. But it is intelligent enough to parse 1,782 as 1782 rather than two numbers. Another problem is that the audio clips are not br…

[deleted]

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#18

Post by atrus »

low_tech_love wrote: post #13
pjmlp wrote: post #6

Yet another example on how jobs will go away, goodbye voice actors.

I am an avid consumer of audiobooks and I will never pay/listen to anything AI-generated. Maybe it's just me, I don't know, but just because they have shown that it is technically feasible, that doesn't mean that there is a market for it. I am skeptical. Listening to audiobooks is already a compromise over reading the book, listening to an AI-generated audiobook sounds to me like a bit too much. But let's see.

You'll never pay/listen to anything you're able to identify as AI-generated.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#19

Post by jawns »

Borrible wrote: post #16

Sounded better than the handful of random corresponding Librivox recordings I listened to in order to compare them. To be honest, a lot of people go to great lengths to make Librivox recordings without having the skills to read aloud. Which is a pity, but nonetheless.

I agree. I love the idea of Librivox, but the volunteers vary widely in quality.

Some are non-native English speakers, some have lisps or other articulation problems, some have other marks of fluency deficiencies, some have under- or over-dramatic intonation, etc.

And even if they're perfect voice actors, often their microphone setups are sub-par, and it comes through in the recording.

Frankly, these AI voices are now at a level where the few mistakes they make are easier to forgive than some of those issues from human readers.

That said, the final hurdle -- giving them the brains to know when to skip or resolve hiccups in the source material, such as typos, formatting issues, or text not intended to be read aloud -- is going to be very hard to overcome.

Re: The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection

#20

Post by xrd »

When I read Rikki Tikki Tavi to my 8 yr old daughter, we play a game. She asks me to change one of the words in the page and she tries to listen and see if she can figure it out. It is mentally taxing at the end of a long day to do that on the fly without pausing to figure out the word to slip in. And, my daughter is very sharp and catches them.

I listened to a few of these. The voice sounds muted at times, as if the reader has a stuffy nose. H.G. Wells was read with a pause in between each period because it "thinks" that each letter boundary is a sentence change, which drove me batty. And, there is zero life in the stories. It might be a good thing to put in front of a kid to put them to sleep, maybe? But, it would not put me to sleep because it is just aggravating to listen to these stories stripped of all life by AI.

Like Louis CK said: "Everything is amazing and no one is happy." I know this is incredible that AI can take in a transcript and produce something that most people would be able to distinguish between a real human. But, we should ask if you would want to hang out with the voice actor at a party.

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