I just got an email from BookBrush this morning, and it contained a survey about interest in creating AI narrated #audiobooks with them if I would paid a one-time fee of $999 USD to join that service. Of course my first thought was what about the #narrators? What about quality? And a number of other things. I did some research and I’m even more concerned, and of course, the email was sparse in details. While it’s tempting as a #SelfPublished author, I still care about the people it effects. The narrators and the authors. Am I being too paranoid about this or is the appropriate reaction? Who wants to discuss? #WritersofMastodon#SelfPublishing
@djsmallauthor As a narrator, let me say: bless your heart. The industry wants to eliminate our role. The whole drive of capitalism right now is to produce products without labor or labor costs. I don't know who they think will have the money to buy their widgets.
Thank you again for the compassion and solidarity.
@AdaraAstin@djsmallauthor As a voice actor hoping to get into audiobooks, I sincerely appreciate your concern for people and the crafts of both writing and having that writing presented expertly by a talented voiceover artist--thank you!!
@AdaraAstin I find it completely wild that the industry wants to get rid of narrators. Like I'm a big audiobook listener, and having the right person read the story I want to listen to is one of the reasons why I will or will not listen to an audio book. Capitalism is toxic as all hell, but it's definitely become a nightmare in creative spaces.
And I stand in solidarity with creatives of all sorts, but even more so when corporations start talking about AI and the like. It's maddening.
@djsmallauthor@AdaraAstin This is an absolute travisty! Human narrators have a quality to them that AI ones just can't replicate to the degree that is fully human. yes, AI is great but when it comes to human emotions, humans should be the ones to deliver that, especially in action books and erotic stuff. It just isn't the same with computers, no matter how good the voice is. If its textbooks, that's okay in my opinion because who wants to read textbooks? but other than that, keep it real! Keep it human!
@gocu54@djsmallauthor Sidebar about textbooks: they are how I got started as an audiobook narrator!
I volunteered at the Office for Students with Disabilities, and I literally read textbooks for students (in the days before TTS apps). I'd show up twice a week, and be assigned random texts for random courses, so it was a total variety grab-bag of materials. I am very happy narrating non-fiction or instructional materials. I really loved that work. It was a pleasure and privilege.
@AdaraAstin@djsmallauthor Ooooooh, nice! Well, thanks so much for doing that very important work. That's one of the ways I personally get my textbooks through a company called learning Ally which was first called recording for the blind and dislexic, (RFBandD)
@djsmallauthor@AdaraAstin note this is happening at the same time as the strikes from writers and actors being replaced by AI. Corporations don't care about art or quality, they just want to make the most money while spending the least. They know people will still pay to watch or read or listen to AI garbage, so they choose the free computer work over the quality human work.
@collette@djsmallauthor@AdaraAstin the best part is that if AI is capable of writing books and scripts and animating 3d reconstructions of actors, it's probably capable of (with supervision) programming robots to do difficult or dangerous tasks that humans aren't up for. but capitalism needs to make people poor and miserable, so technology's only being used to replace people with a higher pay to misery ratio.
@djsmallauthor if I'm gonna pay a bunch of money to have things read aloud to me or my audience you bet I'm gonna pay an actual person to do it! 100% your reaction is appropriate, the AI audiobooks probably suck and are just giving money to some rich person who doesn't work instead of paying someone for their labor
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