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AI is already plaguing artistic endeavors, writing, and many other fields of human activity. I've seen audiobooks appear on Audible narrated by "Virtual Voice," and others from other publishers. The reviews seem to be universally negative. So I guess the business case is "Good, fast, cheap: pick two."
Last week I got a look at how AI is encroaching on my craft. I got an offer to participate in a beta-testing program. I would narrate and produce two hours of audio, which would be used to train an AI to sound like me. When I got a contract to narrate a book, I would use the AI to do the narration, doing an edit pass to fill in corrections and improvements to things like wonky inflection, and deliver it as the finished product. I would pay for this with a substantially reduced royalty, but the idea would be that I could crank out books far faster.
I politely declined to participate.
For one thing, I feel it would be fraudulent to publish a narration as if I had done it, and any asterisk or disclaimer about "AI-assisted" would cheapen whatever reputation I might have.
More than that, I don't trust any company that would bring me into a program like this to not use my trained AI to train their own, and pretty soon they wouldn't need me for anything at all. That day may come. As it is now, all the narrations published under my name are copyrighted by either the publisher or the author, and I'm quite sure none of them would give permission for them to be used to train AI. But how often have the companies that are training AI bothered to ask permission?
It's frustrating, but I'm certainly not the only craftsman who has seen technology overwhelm his craft and render it obsolete. One advantage of being an old geezer is that if it takes 15 years for the buggy-whip market to dry up, I can still make buggy whips up to the end. Doubtless lots of candlemakers and tinsmiths have felt the same.
But, in the meantime, any publisher who offers me a title to narrate, or anyone who pays for the finished product, can be assured that it is 100% me, with no asterisks or robo-help. It's what I do, and I'm going to keep doing it as long as I can.
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Discussion (45)
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I feel for you. When I got into television in the early 1980s so much of it was still a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants endeavor. By the time I reached the end I was a tech monkey. The technology made life decidedly less creative.
Even the producers and directors were limited in their creativity because someone in either Los Angeles, New York or Bristol had decided to dictate the look of the telecasts for their particular network. ESPN is actively working on computer programs that, if realized, would make 95% of us obsolete.
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Podcasts on topics I might have listened to in the past are now avoided because the persons running their youtube channels have decided that having AI narrators is cool.
So for the time being, I won't be keeping up with UFO topics, Big foot in Yosemite etc due to how distasteful these narrators sound.
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Nothing like the warm, rich sound of computers mispronouncing words.
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There are still buggy whip makers and candlemakers. I suspect there are as many buggy whips and candles made in the traditional manner as there were 150 years ago because there is still a need for growth and the US population is now 340 million in the US today vs 38 million in 1875 and we are a much wealthier nation today. Of course they are luxury craft items today.
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