The subject of AI reading audiobooks has come up a number of times, and today I bring you an interesting article from Brian’s Book Blog: Audible’s Virtual Voice is Flooding the Market.
Brian talks in depth about the potential harm and ramifications of relying on the Virtual Voice to read audiobooks and he backed it up with some interesting numbers. We support his position, with the caveat that Virtual Voice may become a necessary tool for visually impaired readers who otherwise wouldn’t have access to the written text.
So what does Virtual Voice sound like? Here is an example. Gordon had a very strong reaction to it. It was a no right away. I listened to about a minute before the weird flatness got me. It just doesn’t have the warmth and range of a human voice.
That’s what AI cannot bring to life — real human emotion. All books have emotions of some kind, some different than others, but all of them have emotions. And there is no way that a computer without feeling can understand and relay that information to a reader. Sure, it can tell me the story, but how is that different than any text-to-speech software that’s out there? I know that some people use and utilize TTS due to some disabilities, but none of them would tell you that any TTS software makes them feel like they’re part of the story or narrative, or that any of them have “life” in their voices.
Brian’s Book Blog
We will not be using Virtual Voice in the production of our audiobooks. With that in mind, I bring you the voice of Roman. This is a cold audition, with Chris reading excerpts with no context. Before everyone gets upset, we know he mispronounced a couple of things, specifically Shinar. I forgot to give him the audio clip for it. No worries, all that will be fixed in the final recording.
The unfortunate reality of all of this is that AI is here to stay. As Mod R put it, “It can feel like holding a finger in the dyke against the deluge: ultimately the indie market will choose the AI covers, and AI voices, and writers will use ChatGPT to edit and proofread, because people want it fast and free.”
In the commercial space, fast and free usually wins. Midjourney is already capable of generating images which most people without an artistic background would find captivating. It can make a cover in seconds. No need to pay the artist, especially if you are just slapping together an object cover. Adobe Photoshop now comes with an AI generator built in. Check this out:
One of the authors I’ve known for years just put out an indie book with an AI cover. I do feel that she probably paid someone to make it, but it’s still an AI cover. I’ve read some 70 comments on her Facebook post. Nobody called her on it. People thought the cover was pretty. Whoever made it didn’t even bother to file off the proverbial serial numbers – it has Midjourney standard face and weird lighting stamped all over it.
Right now someone is probably reading a Chat GPT novel. And who knows, it might do the job. Although that might be a bit off. I’ve asked Chat GPT to continue our writing sample.
Our text:
Please write 2 paragraphs continuing the following scene:
Snow crunched under his feet. It spread in front of him like a glittering blanket, a foot deep, sheathing the vast plain he was crossing, and he sank a little with every step. Above, a night sky gaped like a hole in existence, a spray of stars floating in its black depths.
He didn’t know how long he had been walking. It felt like forever. He didn’t know his destination either. He only felt it, pulling him like a magnet toward the dark wall of colossal fir trees at the edge of the plain.
Step. Another step.
Bitter cold bit at his face. His nose had gone numb, and he could barely feel his fingers in thick red mittens as he clutched the rope pulled tight over his shoulder.
He was holding a rope. Why?
It felt strange somehow.
He stopped and looked over his shoulder. An enormous fir tree lay on the snow behind him. The rope was wrapped around its trunk. Behind it, a long trail of rough snow marked his wake and rolled off into the horizon. He had dragged the tree for miles.
Chat GPT’s response:
The man stood in the silent expanse, his breath forming ethereal clouds in the frigid air. The only sound was the muffled crunch of snow beneath his boots, a rhythmic percussion that matched the beat of his weary heart. The forest loomed ahead, the towering firs casting elongated shadows in the moonlight. A sense of foreboding gripped him, yet the magnetic pull toward the dark woods intensified. The stars above seemed to conspire with the trees, whispering secrets that only the night could understand.
With a hesitant resolve, he resumed his journey, the rope taut in his gloved hands. As he approached the forest’s edge, the trees seemed to close in on him, their branches forming a natural gateway into the unknown. The air grew thicker, laden with the scent of pine and mystery. He hesitated for a moment, peering into the darkness beneath the canopy. A subtle rustling echoed from within, a symphony of unseen creatures awakening in the night. The man took a deep breath, summoning the courage to step into the shadowy embrace of the towering firs.
The forest swallowed him whole, the snow-covered ground muffling his footsteps. The colossal trees stood like sentinels, their limbs entwined in a dance of ancient secrets. As he ventured deeper, the man became acutely aware of a presence, an intangible force that seemed to guide him through the maze of trunks and shadows. His senses heightened, attuned to the subtle whispers of the forest. The rope in his hands now felt like a lifeline connecting him to the unknown, unraveling a tale written in the language of nature itself. Each step brought him further into the heart of the enigma, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that the answers to his questions lay hidden among the ancient firs.
It is both flowery and overwritten, and oddly sappy somehow. A word salad. Chat GPT apparently quite loves the sound of its own prose, heh. Don’t we all.
The supporters of AI often accuse their opponents of being Luddites and trying to hold back progress. And in some sense, they are right. The original Luddites protested automation that led to the production of inferior products. We already have a proliferation of speed-written books out there. If Chat GPT becomes widely used, KU will be flooded with its offerings.
Why would any human bother to read something another human didn’t bother to write? Or to paint or to record?
Where does it leave all of us working in a creative field? I don’t know. We will see.
I am the first. “There can be only one!”
Good one! Nice Sean Connery impression!
😂😂
LOL! You are a smartass. This is only one of the many reasons why we love you. 🙂
I find CHAT GPT’s prose disturbing. I’m assuming it can’t write a book/scene without initial human input ?
You have to give it a prompt, yes, it doesn’t spontaneously start to generate things – but it needn’t be a sample of writing.
For example, I just asked it to “write a limerick about how much Mod R loves Roman”, no specification about who these individuals were or anything else:
“There once was a mod named R, oh so keen,
Whose love for Roman was quite unforeseen.
With toga and laurel,
He’d cheer him, no quarrel,
In forums, his praises were evergreen!”
It’s obvi nonsense, but will respect the limerick formula- the main problem is that it will reuse the same wording and themes for other limericks and a lot of people will end up with very similar results. The longer the piece of writing is, the more the formulaic nature, purple prose and general waffliness becomes apparent. It says not much with a lot of words. “Kill your darlings” is not a thing for AI because it can’t discern.
I can do better than that in 5 minutes!
There once was a mod named Mod R
For whom Roman shone like a star
Though it causes some friction
When we tell her he’s fiction
She continues to pine from afar…
That’s BRILLIANT! 😍😍😍 I love it!
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Excellent! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
+1 awesome
WONDERFUL!
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
What they said!
Could we have a dedicated section on the blog for fan art? Texts and music, too. I do remember this haunting song from Kate’s grandmother “I’m alive”. That belongs there aswell and I’d love to listen to it again!
That is BRILLIANT!
What’s more, it makes the point so beautifully. It’s good fun using AI to entertain yourself and it can even get you started on a dull document if you are feeling stuck, but reading a whole book written by AI… hahhahahahahahahhahaha. Not likely.
Awesome!
Bravo! The better tempo of your limerick is far superior!
Love it!
Bravo!
I find AI really fascinating – having “conversations” with it, brainstorming ideas etc. Aside from the ethical/legal issues with how it was developed, I think there are some interesting ways it will become part of people’s lives. Claude, for example can provide critical feedback about writing when prompted with specific questions. While that feedback won’t be up to the standard of a professional editor, for someone who is a hobbyist without the money to spend, it might be a starting point for learning.
That said, I agree – there is a certain flatness to AI output. It can generate content like nothing else, but that content doesn’t necessarily resonate with readers. Writers can go back in and rewrite, edit, improve, but I wonder if the amount of work required to get it to produce something awesome wouldn’t be better spent just writing a non-ai draft? I also agree – ebook retailers are going to be flooded by AI written books. Some may be passable but I suspect it’s going to become harder and harder to find books that satisfy if buying from an unknown author.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this! I’d wondered where you both had landed on this topic.
You know what happens to those who are first and not named McCloud — “thwack!”
The clip took a bit before the lack of emotion got to me. But I had to laugh at Chat’s attempt. That AI really loves trees!
OMG! I recognize this voice. This is Chris Brinkley, yes? Woohoo! I am a huge fan.
Indeed he is! And same 😀
Interesting the cues that it picked up from the “seed” text – and the feeling that there will never be a resolution to the AI bits, poor Roman will just continue to be lost in the forest forever.
Agreed, it seems like the AI can describe things all day long in the most flowery terms, but it has no concept of the action in storytelling. A “story” with just descriptions is a travel ad, not a novel.
So much to say.
1. I tried to listen to an audio book from another author I enjoy and a book I know and reread regularly. After 10 minutes I had to stop. The reader spoke in a fast, clipped, monotone, which didn’t fit my view of the characters at all. And there was almost no change in voice pattern between characters. So live readers can be as bad. Which is why I SOOO appreciate that you vet your audio book readers. It makes all the difference to my experience.
2. AI generated reading might be perfect for nonemotional content like textbooks, dictionaries, cook books, or manuals. Especially because I am finding that reading AND listening to the same thing really ups my comprehension and retention.
3. The AI generated text you provide is simply descriptive without real content. Paraphrasing Lois Bujold, “Every paragraph should push the story along or why is it there?” There is no story in the AI content just scenery and a repeat of the story elements already provided.
4. Finally, I have to wonder if AI might eventually do a better job if given a story outline to work from. My niece uses AI to create the first draft of some of her business communication because it saves time. She never sends that draft out, but she starts with it and then edits.
From what I understand, any content generated by AI is not “owned” by the person making the request or query or whatever you want to call it. That means it’s possible for it to turn up verbatim in other places. Problematic if you’re an author trying to protect your work.
With ChatGPT you have the option to not share with others, but then your text will be erased after 30 days.
The paid version has even more options.
I suspect AI will go the way of most Freeware.
A limited version for free, which will be enough for the occasional user.
A paid version for the professional user.
The US Copyright Office (the federal agency that issues copyright) has interpreted current US copyright law as requiring a person to create a work, therefore making any AI created works public domain. It hasn’t issued a formal statement yet, that should be coming sometime this year, but it has denied or revoked copyrights on AI works.
Roman’s voice is great!
I think AI can be useful for doing certain tasks, but the point of art, whether writing, painting or even crafting allows human input and this is what makes it art, not a mechanical rendering.
Just my opinion.
From a communication seminar I attended, 70% of human communication is nonverbal. (Which is why texting is frustrating.) The best AI can achieve is to convey 30% of the message. That maybe enough in some situations but not in storytelling. When I read the “real” except from the serial I felt Roman’s anger and resignation where the AI conveyed fear. I don’t think that was what House Andrews wanted.
Maybe I am hypersensitive but you get used to an author’s style and how they take you into the story, that AI scene was not going anywhere. I think if I listened to it long or even read it long it enough I would fall asleep.
I know at this point the AI/ML distinction really is only academic because the media decided it was all AI, but as someone that works in IT, I always twitch academically when something is called AI. Academically we have yet to actually create AI. The distinction is the inability to actually create original content. Instead what we have is Machine Learning that takes the works of others and has learned how to mash it together into something similar, but ultimately unoriginal. Just because an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare doesn’t mean I’m going to hire them to write a play. Even if most movies nowadays aren’t that dissimilar from what ChatGPT creates.
I am paralyzed between wanting to avoid AI until I can no longer hide and feeling like I should inform myself so I’m capable when the time comes, which seems to be now … Sarah Conner in between terminator 1 and 2…definitely not jacked and ready to kick butt.
ChatGPT has its own distinctive voice. As an English teacher, I’ve become very familiar with it. Anytime I give my students a writing prompt, I also run it through ChatGPT so that I can recognize the cheaters faster.
Had hilarious attempts at cheating from students back in the late 90s when Babelfish was first out. I imagine it’s a lot harder to spot AI cheaters!
I just don’t get sucked into the AI story, whereas I am RIGHT THERE freezing my gluteous maximus off in the original.
😀
While I think Chris Brinkley is an amazing voice actor, I will forever associate him with the Winston Brothers series by Penny Reid. I totally “hear” Roman with a slightly Slavic accent. But that’s just me.
He does have an accent if you listen carefully 🙂 , at minute 1:09 with “what you’re capable of” and “grow and evolve all the time”- those are definitely the hard “b” and “v”s of Eastern Europe. It’s subtle, and that is on purpose.
Roman is canonically “light” on the Russian accent and perfectly capable of sounding pure American, he affects the Russian because he has to maintain the Dark Priest of Slavic God appearances. It’s a choice not to make him sound like the Muppet Count von Count with “I vant” exaggerations.
Now I expected Roman to have at least a little bit of a Jawja accent. Not a Deep South drawl, but a more urban one. Maybe he turns that one on and off too?
For BDH members who are not from the Deep South:
Jawja = the localized pronunciation of the U.S. state of “Georgia”, since the KD stories mostly take place in Adlanna (oops, I mean “Atlanta” :-D).
I did have to say it out loud to get it 😀
Alternate spelling: Etlanna
💖
The one I hear most often is Alanna.
I dunno whatch’all talkin’ ’bout. Next door here in Alabama, y’all are Hotlanta. More local to me, we got Huntsvegas and The ‘Ham (complete with the best pulled pork barbecue anywhere).
Ya’ll are all killin me…I’m in Savannah, Georgia and yep, my Mama’s folks arrived here around 1790…I have the DEEP South accent. 😜 I appreciate the AI discussion. I’m not a huge audio book fan, as the pacing often distracts me. I agree that the performance makes a huge difference to the experience. If I needed AI due to a disability, I’d be very appreciative. But I’ll read until my eyes give out. I guess I’m a semi-proud Luddite, as I find lots of tech to be jarring, though I appreciate my IPhone. Knowledge at my fingertips is powerful, but I recognize the source makes all the difference. I expect the only way to effectively control AI content is for people to stop reading/listening and paying for substandard content. As long as it’s profitable, buyer be ware, it’s here to stay.
That’s like Tranna. A large city on the north shore of Lake Ontario spelled Toronto. 🙂
I like the voice for Roman. I figure he will be even better after reading the entire story and knowing the pronunciations.
No way could AI replicate that.
hesitant resolve???
ROMAN??
I couldn’t finish after that. So flowery. word glad is the perfect description.
I do find the “don’t steal my AI creations” movement pretty amusing tho
I love Chris Brinkley. I did listen to him for the Winston Bros series, but he has small nuances that change with each character so its never quite the same. Looking forward to Romans audio.
One of my favorite passages in the clip! Thank you!
I’m already so picky about authentic voice in books, I’m not likely to enjoy anything AI generated.
My computer didn’t like the audio clip, but that is one fine voice.
Just listened this morning to an article on NPR about AI theft of books-subsequently posted for sale on Amazon with different covers and an AI “author.”
I know this is off-topic but it has me concerned for bestselling authors like yourselves-you work so hard and I want you to be paid for it! AI is such a double-edged sword.
😑 word salad.
I also felt like the prompted version of the story was he would walk Forever without question. Bo-ring
I have extensive reading experience. And I use ChatGPT for menial tasks. I can tell you that the world is already flooded with a huge quantity of ”books” written by authors nobody heard of, with the same handful of wilted tropes, the same cardboard character types. Some of them even have good ratings on Goodreads.
There is more to a book than just the writing. A good book has a compelling plot without holes and characters with complex dynamic and evolution. No AI can do this. AI can generate ”pretty” art and pages of text that sound good and nothing more, and unfortunately millions of people are content with these, otherwise AI wouldn’t have been so successful.
The real, good books and the real art crafted by human creativity will remain something for the ”connoisseurs”, while the millions of mindless consumers of ”more, cheap and fast” will eventually forget how it is to use their brains.
I am harsh but I am furious about this situation. This is not about being against progress, because, in the grand scheme of things, there is no progress in drying out human creativity.
I was a little impressed with the AI reader. there was more variation and rhythm than I expected. it said “veil” with the appropriate drop off instead of flat (you just dont say “veil” with a straight tone). I agree that we humans are more musical than the AI reader, but I think if I got used to it I could fill in the song. the biggest complaint I had was that it was 10% too slow. My goodness the tedium.
I really don’t like AI, it creeps me out. I was at a travel expo in February and Pauline Frommer was speaking about reputable travel guides-she mentioned that there is a fake guide book out by Mike Steves, it is a ripoff of Rick Steves’s guide books. In the fake book they talk about the seasons and when they come to autumn it talks about being careful not to fall, nothing about traveling. Also during a resume writing class using ChatGPT the speakers said that the software makes things up regarding your employment history and that once you input your information it stays in the data bank and it can be used anywhere and in other peoples resumes 😐.
My hope is that AI will be ultimately rejected in producing original works. I’m already leary of “new” authors that have appeared. I’d prefer my stories to come from human beings. I feel like the rights of creatives to own and make a living off their work is being threatened by a machine that knows no legal bounds. When is AI going to say, “Hmm, this work sounds like the well-know author Ilona Andrews. Legal limitations will not permit me to process your request for a new story about (insert character name here.)? Because if it is so smart, then the managers of it should be able to program it to do such things.
Unfortunately, it’s the opposite. You can tell the generative AI that you want it to sound like Ilona Andrews and it will try to make it so. How it does that when it denies having scraped authors’ intellectual property is a very curious business…
There is definite proof that generative AI was trained using copyrighted work, including by House Andrews- you can see the substack The Atlantic has acquired https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/09/books3-database-generative-ai-training-copyright-infringement/675363/?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share and use their search. You’ll be surprised.
A good *human* narrator can totally bring a book to life which is clearly missing from AI (at least for me). There have been books that I thought “just weren’t for me” that I became a big fan of once I listened instead of read it myself. I’ve also discovered new authors/books from following a favorite narrator.
The AI generated writing made me laugh. Clearly it’s no match for House Andrews!
We, of the BDH, know that the AI writing sample, was not describing anything about Roman.
It doesn’t sound or feel like any of your books.
I am retired and on a limited budget, but am part of the BDH that will support you any way I can.
That means paying for your quality.
I don’t know when people who are not involved in creative fields (like writing, music, art, photography, etc.) started to feel entitled to the work product of those who are for free or for a small pittance. I have heard people say nonsense like, “If you charge for this you won’t have nearly as many people reading it. You will get more recognition if you make it free!”
I have to feel it is an off-shoot of the “clicks and likes are as good as currency” attitude that many younger folks have, but even before this you would see people who wanted free wedding photographers because “my wedding will definitely be a social event that will get your name out there” and “all you do it click a button, we’re feeding you, so that should be enough.”
I have done portrait drawings and paintings from life or from photos and people love the idea of that, but not so much the idea of PAYING for that.
It is one of the reasons I decided to teach math instead of being a portrait painter full time. Even then some lunatic will try to shame you into volunteering your time for free because if you are a teacher you are “supposed to care about your students.” It so happens I DO care about them, but I also have bills to pay and a workman is worthy of his hire.
This is actually factually incorrect. I used to work for a consulting firm that published the occasional book. They ran studies, others ran studies, their audiences were far more likely to read the book if they paid for it than if it was given for free. Even if it was a $2 pittance. Free obviously meant no good.
As someone who sews (mostly costumes)- there is definitely a prejudice that creative work isn’t “real” work. Drawing and writing for free, work for “exposure” – it’s staggering. And infuriating. I didn’t spend years (or decades) of my life learning the skills I use in my creative pursuits for that effort to be denigrated. “AI” has made valuation of creative pursuits drop by making those activities seem effortless.
Two things come to mind when I hear about these issues; one, “people die from exposure”; and two, the cost of labor isn’t just the time I spend now to make a thing, but also the past hours of studying to know how to make that thing.
(simmering rage)
I got a book that was in an AI voice, and it was horrible. It was obvious because it was so emotionless, just a series of words until a character with an accent was read. They used a real person for that. Totally ruined a most excellent book. I am glad that you all are not going to allow that!
I agree that the machine reading option is great for people who are unable to read things themselves, but real people are definitely better at it. It could be really useful for school items, like textbooks, for visually impaired folks when other options aren’t available.
Personally, I don’t care for traditional audiobooks because I sometimes have trouble distinguishing between characters when it’s all read by the same person, but I know they’re very popular. That’s why I love the Graphic Audio books sooo very much because I know who’s speaking! (I have hearing issues.)
That is a wonderful Roman though! Question, is it pronounced Ro-man (like the people from Rome) or Ro-mán? Thanks! 🤗
Román, the second one- not like something that is from Rome.
Thanks Mod R! 🤗
I don’t like to mispronounce things, even if it’s just in my own head. 😁
overworked mom here, running out of time, needing 12 rhyming tropical themed indoor (but not in personal spaces) treasure hunt clues for a hoard of 8-year-olds descending the next day for a birthday party.
chatGPT delivered. saved my bacon.
There were some specific places I wanted to hide things so I had to follow up my prompt with a few more specific requests. One time I forgot to specify it was for 8-year-olds and the difference between the 8-year-old version and the adult version was hilarious. The adult version had a lot of flowery prose.
I try to understand the dangers of AI and the exploitation of artists and don’t support the replacement of humans generally.
I looked first on Etsy and nobody had exactly what I needed and I didn’t have the bandwidth to create it myself.
Call me a luddite, but i will never ever give up real books by real humans.
Please House andrews, dont give up either 😆
Travis Baldree did a YouTube video with an example of AI reading text and him reading text and even though the AI was way better than I expected, the difference was huge.
Question concerning Roman’s name pronunciation: I’ve always read it as Ro’-man (long o, short a, emphasis on 1st syllable) just like the Roman empire. Listening to the audio, he is emphasizing the 2nd syllable. Is that what HA intended when they named the character? (This is me being slightly OCD about reading names correctly. 🙂 )
Never mind, I see a reply to a previous comment while I was composing my question.
The intended pronunciation is as in the voice clip, not Roman as in the Empire 🙂
When this first broke, I had just read a Roald Dahl short story written in 1953 called “The Great Automatic Grammatizator”. It’s ChatGPT. In its entirety. They took bestselling authors and fed their works into the machine, and the machine created new works. The best part was that most — but not all — authors agreed to have their stories written by the machine because the machine was better. There were only a few holdouts, those very few who could write better than the Grammatizator.
It was within a couple of days that I first heard of AI writing and ChatGPT. I literally had goosebumps.
Of COURSE KU will be flooded. Writers trying to make money on that platform now have to turn out a book/month. If they can use ChatGPT to publish every few days? And only taking days to create an artificial space? (Or upload to Amazon, I have zero idea how much time that takes). As it was a year ago, I cancelled my KU subscription because it was no longer a library, it was a machine.
I have faith, though. I have faith that Hollywood will go through another phase of original movies, that people will continue to buy from authors who employ editors (or publish through houses that employ editors). Because I have faith that there are enough people around the world who can recognize originality and quality to keep originality and quality afloat.
Yeah, can’t listen to the automated voice reading at all. My husband had to do many hours of online training to re-up his welding inspector’s license, all of it had that automated voice and it put him to sleep every time. It took him forever to get it finished because of the flatness and perfectly even rhythm to the reading. Now the material was pretty boring as well, but that is part of the problem with something like training, if the “voice” used is flat and, in essence, hypnotic people zone out and you have defeated your purpose. It’s worthless for fiction in my opinion. Audio books are not just someone reading out loud, they are voice acting and that takes a lot of skill and nuance. Which is why a good narrator is worth their weight in gold.
I am currently taking a class on Geoethics. This week’s discussion was about plagiarism in scientific works. Many people were VERY emphatic that AI written work is a form of fraud rather than a short cut even if the researcher did the fieldwork. I agree because I think that doing the write up is part of the process to understanding the data. Personally, it’s like we are seeing the end of human expression, even in dry scientific terms :)…
Love Chris Brinkley, can’t wait for this!
AI reading – no thanks.
Narrator for Roman – yes, please!!
The Midjourney illustrations can be pretty, however, there is no life to them.
Visit any art museum – you can feel the energy in all the exhibition halls.
The “faster, cheaper” ethos will give peoples’ minds the same indigestion their stomachs have from drive-thru dining….
When people discuss AI, I remember an old 4th Doctor Who episode in which the crew of a space ship came down with a phobia of robots/robot voices.
There’s just something vital missing from AI. People think of it as a mind, and it’s not–it’s the shadow of whatever minds direct it. When that group is skewed or doesn’t care about quality the end result is a quagmire.
Given the wreck that Gemini was for Google, that doesn’t bode well.
I don’t think AI is suited for everything. Just this week I was trying to return a pair of sandals (they were the wrong kind) and the company website, it’s refund department, nothing on it worked. They’d gone to an AI for that, and it crashed. I had to call them direct, and it still took two tries to get the right label sent to me.
AI is great if you’re trying to collate data for a spreadsheet or make a graphic image with a set template. It doesn’t work when it has to interact with problems that have to be figured out on the fly. If it breaks, it won’t fix itself. From what I’ve seen, it creates twice to three times as much work. The customer service people I talked to were exhausted.
It’s going to be a wild ride for a while.
I’d have a lot less problem with AI art and books if they weren’t basically stealing from real artists and writers in order to create content. Also, in a lot of the AI art I see on Instagram, all of the people have the exact same faces no matter the character. It’s so cookie cutter.
at best I’d use ai briefly to find a reference for a style, but i would much rather pay an actual person. in fact I would pay extra for original hardcopies of art. Here hopefully soon I can find a great real life artist who can create what I want for a horror project.
Not just no to AI voices, but hell NO.
Still very much in the works, you did not miss it 🙂 . There was an update just last week, all the special editions have been autographed https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/no-roman-today/
We don’t have an official date yet, but summertime/ second half of the year is a good estimate 🙂
The AI attempt has Roman standing in the first sentence, hearing only the sound of his feet crunching the snow in the second sentence, and him resuming his journey in the next paragraph – arrrrgggghhhh. Plus wouldn’t the tree being pulled make some sound?
Plus, the AI has him wearing gloves instead of red mittens…
on an on-topic aside, does anyone else have Grammarly telling them to “Write faster with generative AI”?
It’s insane
Every time I read posts at work about AI, I remind my department that AI (and machine learning) are only as good as the people who program it. When I remind everyone, for some reason everyone relaxes over it. I can see it helping in the health care industry. For creative purposes, not so much.
If I read and/or heard something with a flatness to it, I would definitely fall asleep. I don’t care how good the story is “written”, snooze city for me. That flatness reminds me of the computers of the Kinsmen series that probed for implants and the PPP.
The audio Roman snippet made me smile and laugh. I laughed at the pronunciation of Shinar. The way Chris pronounced it in the cold read made me think of Shiner Bock beer, which is made in Texas. 😁😂
By the way, thanks Mod R for the correct pronouncement of Roman’s name. 😊
The AI nice is disturbing, and I could not listen to that. The writing is not something I could read either. It is definitely a lot of words without saying anything at all.
Virtual Voice is the subject of several postings on the Audible reddit page. People are frustrated with Virtual Voice titles flooding “new titles” searches. Audible’s search function was already clunky for the purposes of browsing for a new series/author and now you have to wade through Virtual Voice releases to find human narration. This is not good for the authors/human narrators.
I enjoyed listening to the audition excerpt. Looking forward to the audiobook!
I guess the gtp in chat gtp stands for gushing tortured prose.
Also, also .. is there page that lists which series might still get sequels or spinoffs? Just finished re-reading the Hidden Legacy series and am hoping for moar someday.
Yes there is, the Release Schedule page 🙂 https://ilona-andrews.com/release-schedule/ A direct link to it is always available in the upper left corner on the website.
All the series are enumerated in the Complete Book list- and it’s explained that if the status isn’t “Finished/ Finished for now”, they are considered ongoing.
Specifically, the Hidden Legacy series has ended for now. That means a sequel isn’t planned or guaranteed at the moment, but it might happen in the future. There are ideas for it, so the authors might always reconsider after a few years, just like they did with Kate and the Wilmington adventures 🙂
Thank you!
*keeps fingers crossed for more House Baylor stories eventually*
Definitely don’t want to speak for the visually impaired members of the Horde, but I remember a guest speaker from my library school days who explained that, as a visual impaired person, he prefers to use dedicated screen readers at very high speed for normal reading, and regular audio books for leisurely / entertainment reading (kind of like a sighted reader curling up with a book). This sort of negates the usefulness of AI in an accessibility context.
There’s a middle ground of things that aren’t available on a text to speech screen, and don’t make it to a dedicated audiobook format either because they’re not fiction- such as certain textbooks, manuals, cookbooks etc. Ideally they would all have a digital version compatible with devices that could read them, but it’s not always the case.
I’d never used it before so I decided to do a test and asked ChatGPT to write a 7 minute speech on a couple of sentences of a famous text. It was amazingly fast and kind of freaked me out, but there was no actual depth to the “speech”. Pretty much reiterated some pablum for a few paragraphs. Thankfully, I was not giving any such speech so I wasn’t relying on it. Anyone who would should be ashamed because it basically blared laziness.
I think it might be a good tool for outlining or for getting suggestions when you can’t find perspective, but you really can’t trust it to do much else. Just the way it makes up historical references and information it presents as “fact” should make people shy away from it as a substitute for a human doing the writing.
Does this mean politicians have been using AI for years? Much of what they say is pablum to me as is much of what some news networks spew.
I play a Dress-Up/Interactive Story Game that I will likely drop soon because of AI/ChatGPT. The quality of the stories has gone downhill so bad since it’s release 3 years ago.
The original stories had heart and emotion. It was COHERENT. The new stories are hot garbage. There’s lines that simply don’t make sense. The plot lines are convoluted. It literally gives a head ache and feels like a fever dream.
I’ve become so snobbish in regards to KU because there’s so many indie books that are being pumped out with no regard for editing or even thought and heart. It’s become money-grabbing and I don’t like that ChatGPT is quite literally “entering the chat”. It used to be amazing that anyone with a passion for writing and a dream book could set it free into the world. But now, it’s become a curse of sorts.
TLDR: I agree with this post and am wary what this will mean in the future.
I am glad to know that AI will not be replacing you in any form.
Eventually, there will be social media/blog accounts whose whole goal is to review authors as AI-assisted or human. There may be a markup on human authors amidst the sea of generative trash, and I’ll pay it. I only have so much free time to read. I’d rather spend it on the shared human experience of storytelling, because I can see the author through the text and can appreciate their artistry.
“Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.”
Orange Catholic Bible
I think Frank Herbert was more prescient than we give him credit for.
This is exactly what I said…
I agree that Virtual Voice could have a place but for not for fiction. Real people narrating is what makes the story come to life (yes, I’ve heard poor narrators but not often). And ChatGPT… epic fail for the example provided.
I also agree with the person who mentioned that AI really isn’t – it’s ultimately just good programming and machine learning.
I’m so glad HA continues producing high quality work, has an amazing moderator as well as uses quality narrators and provides input for quality GA productions. To me, it’s a bar they’ve set that very few have managed to meet.
PS: A truly bad voice can kill an audio book. Just check out the reviews on Audible. Many of those reviews are so picky it is ridiculous but they do reflect on the book ratings.
I wonder how that will work if AI readers become common. After all Audible is a business and if it effects the business they can dictate policy. I wonder if Amazon/Audible with let readers know if books are AI or not?
Oh yes! Real readers can be even worse than that sample by a long way! I have several very old audiobooks I’ve not been able to listen to, the reader was that bad.
I never thought of myself as a Luddite, but I still never plan to read a book not written by a human being. Just why? That chat gpt sample was simply not very interesting. As mentioned, it was too flowery and it lacked depth of feeling, too. And where was the story development? It did not draw me in.
As to the virtual voice sample, just rather flat and uninteresting, but not as bad as I expected. That said, it’s probably better than nothing if you have problems reading books. I would not want to deprive someone of a desired book just because there’s no professional audio version.
I always thought Roman was pronounced the same way a citizen of Rome would be called. As in Roman Centurion. Wasn’t expecting Roe-MAN with an accent on the second syllable. Have I been reading Roman’s name wrong all this time? Or is this an example of something he improvised? (Personally couldn’t care how he pronounces Shinar as it’s a word used infrequently.)
The authors don’t mind how the readers pronounce it 🙂 , but yes, their intent is for Roh-mán, accent on the second syllable, not like a citizen of Ancient Rome. The voice clip has it right- there was a tutorial for the narrator on that pronunciation.
I don’t see any difference between the two CS graphic novel covers. Someone please tell me what I’m missing.
It’s not the covers, it’s the background 🙂
When the AI stuff broke I had a flashback to the Fritz Leiber novel “The Silver Eggheads’. -A future where ‘authors’ were basically fronts for various writing machines that produced what was referred to as word wooz. Perfect term for AI content!
I worked as a contractor listening to clips from multiple books being read mostly by AI. I rated the clips on numerous categories, but it always came down to my final comments that it was universally flat and emotionless. People would be dying or fighting or having some major emotional reaction and the reader sounded like they were just getting ready to take a nap. There’s also a major problem with it not differentiating voices, so dialogue between characters got very difficult to follow. It worked okay with non-fiction, but one of the fiction books was a favorite of mine and listening to the AI audio clips almost made me hate the book.
Please no AI. I will start buying more of the audio books. I already bought some audio books but not your entire written work yet. I have purchased all ebooks that you have written(oops except the edge’s series. For some reason I didn’t get into that storyline). But I never realized that AI was competing with human beings original talent. I just fine that confusing. I definitely want the author to tell us if their written storyline or illustrations have been done by AI. I wouldn’t purchase it if that is the case
Indie author here. So I’ve avoided doing AI covers for the last few years, not buying AI art even though I have to go out of my way to redo covers and give up on a particular element because all I can find is an AI image of something I wanted on the cover. I don’t sell enough to buy original art very often. A few of my covers have original art aspects that I paid an artist to do. I do buy stock art. I’ve had a couple of covers professionally done and I’ll continue to avoid AI out of respect for the artists.
I don’t use AI to write the books either. That’s out of respect for myself. Plus…well, what does a writer do if not write???
A few years ago, Google invited me to their beta to do AI audio books. I participated and did several. Now, granted, I’m not a huge name so selling audiobooks on Google and Kobo (I am allowed to sell the AI audio on other platforms so long as I don’t undercut Google prices) so I cannot expect huge sales numbers. My take and the feedback I’ve gotten is that readers don’t really want AI. The AI is inevitably better than they expect and the price is better than they expect. But audio book listeners want that voice inflection to be near perfect. They want to fall in love with the voice as much as the book and the plot. It’s like listening to music–readers are picky.
I was just invited to participate in the Audible AI audio beta program. I declined. I know that Audible sells far more audio books than kobo or my blog or Google play. But it’s still very time consuming to generate an AI audiobook because you have to choose the voice, proof-listen to the book and make corrections. And I didn’t find it worth it with Google. I do think it will be a wave with some readers if the price is right. But the feedback I’ve gotten is that the audio books are just “okay’ and “kind of flat” and ‘not bad in the car, but I’d prefer a real voice.”
I’ve given it more than a year since the first Google Play AI audio, but the feedback and acceptance remains the same.
I find your insights valuable as always so thanks for sharing them. I love that you do original art for most of your covers and always appreciate that you share the artist info with us too. Thank you!
No question, I definitely prefer House Andrews writing to AI. There is now actual real emotion in the fake stuff. Just fake drama that is unreal and doesn’t fit the character. It is blah and bland. Too much. Real life isn’t that overwhelmingly sappy and there is no humor. No matter how dark it is, we can all find some humor somewhere. That’s part of life.
I do the read and listen with textbooks (10 points for ADHD!), and it helps, but I can’t just listen or it very quickly doesn’t make any sense. The AI voice I use is a “premium” one, but still often mispronounces words, doesn’t pause according to punctuation, etc. Even having paid for the subscription, and having some ebooks that I *desperately* wish were available in audio, I have zero desire to run them through the AI voice; it would ruin the story completely. Calling it comparable to human narration is like calling Google Maps a tour guide :/
As a semi-retired voice actor, I completely agree with HA. Imagine AI attempting the Graphic Audio recordings 😣. There’s such nuance in your characters and they express themselves with amazing depth, so far, technology can’t replicate it.
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Unfortunately technology “learns” and humans become accustomed to fast and cheap. See the Grand Burger for a reference. Oro and his cooking would get my vote over processed food-like substances any day 😛.
AI can’t last long. As you mentioned it is lifeless. As time will show us it will be a fad like Beta tapes lol. Only popular to those who become fans.
I feel the same. I’m a copywriter and thr amount of stakeholders and clients who say Oh we can just use ChatGPT to create content – not even noticing the basic-ness or banality of the output it generates, makes me worry for the fiture of this profession. As a reader, there is nothing that AI generates which interests me. Although maybe the way humans interact with these LLMs may yet create something interesting because of the human factor – cannot be ruled out.
This reminds me of the old adage about crafts- and trades- people and their work: “Fast, cheap and good — you can have any two out of the three”.
Incidentally, in our professional news, about a year ago, there was a trial lawyer in the US who ruined his career because he needed a trial brief in a hurry and used ChatGPT to write it. ChatGPT … uhmmm … “invented” the case precedents it cited in support of its legal arguments; the Court was, shall we say, Not Amused.
I can see Virtual Voice being used to proof technical docs (I do a lot of those so I can see that value), but narration for a book? It wouldn’t matter if the book is fiction or non-fiction real human please.
I’ve been using chat gtp to fill in forms. Mostly converting spreadsheets. I find it fascinating as after awhile you can really spot it. It’s just not more, somehow. Flowing writing but not extra,
I couldn’t find the link to the examples of the virtual voice, when I clicked on one of the books that were in the audible page the link went to, it sounded like an actress who I recognised was reading the book. any examples of which book I should look for to hear the AI?
The link leads to Angels Flight: The Trials of Kit Shannon 🙂
I agree with the commentary. What I noticed in addition is that as chatGBT doesn’t have the full context, it’s just not Roman. The parts about him being weary, hesitant and building up his courage just aren’t him. He’s done this kind of thing before and has an accepting quirky and almost blase attitude to these situations.
Ironically, for those of us in the creative fields AI will eventually leave us in 1984.
We already get under paid & are expected to work cross-fields because the boss has Microsoft Paint & Word so why can’t we code a website, design the marketing, write the intro, come up with some illustrations, develop the map, do the book cover, recover the furniture, & paint the new office.
And yes, I had this boss who expected me to do all the above including the interior designing all while using Microsoft PAINT so HE could send it to the printers & business partners all in the same email…
I strongly suspect it will be like other technologies. An awful lot of people will use it at the beginning, there will be wringing of hands by the “elite”, then the old way will come back for many. As it was with vinyl, cinema, walking, radio etc. After all for publishers such as Mills and Boon, no one will notice the difference, whilst I can’t see yourselves or Marilynne Robinson, say, not actually writing.
If I’m completely honest, that was the first human narration I didn’t completely hate. Yes it tends to flow better and has emotion with a person but I prefer text to speech. There are no annoying lisps or breathing noises, the cadence can be chosen to suit your listening type, and there is no attempt at an accent to differentiate characters.
Obviously each to their own and I’m not really into audiobooks, but if I have to listen to something, I generally prefer TTS. Although the voice for Roman would make a great guided meditation voiceover.
I don’t like AI audiobooks I don’t they don’t sound like and everything else so no way aI for me. unhappy or not I do like the comic strip I can’t wait to see it because two libraries that I go to here in Iowa have it now so I’m going to be reading one of them
I find the AI content way to wordy. It is like a writing contest or a school assignment that requires a specific number of words. The contest becomes who can use the most and biggest words to write a paragraph. It is OK but less words would have made the same point.
Since I don’t do audio books – I just can’t get into them for some reason though I do keep trying – this is the first time I’ve heard Roman’s name pronounced out loud. Is that the way it’s supposed to be pronounced?
I live in Israel, where we have a very significant population of Russian extraction (I think maybe 20%), and all the guys named Roman that I have met or heard of pronounce their names RO-mahn, rather than Ro-MAHN like in this snippet. I’m not saying the reader is wrong (how presumptuous would that be?), just that I’m surprised. Do I need to get used to calling the guy Ro-MAHN in my head?
(correct pronunciation of names is a pet peeve of mine. Sorry…)
The authors don’t mind how the readers pronounce it 🙂 , but yes, their intent is for Roh-mán, accent on the second syllable, not like a citizen of the Roman empire. The voice clip has it right- there was a tutorial for the narrator on that pronunciation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6u9YaV4EQc&ab_channel=Voxifier
If they are Russian and they pronounce it as RO-man, it’s because they are tired of correcting people. 🙂
Am I the only one who thought Roman was said like you would say Ancient Rome instead of the way the snippet was said?
The way the sample has it is the intended pronunciation 🙂, but you can pronounce it however it’s more comfortable.
Thank you Mod R. I appreciate the info
Before I heard the audio version I thought Saiman was just a weird way to spell Simon. I like the different pronunciations for him and Roman. I also pronounced Evdokia differently in my head than the audio. It’s good to learn things.
Ah, another gorgeous, powerful, flexible, pheromone-rich male voice … I need a cigarette, and a pre-order button, where’s the pre-order button ….
Also, no Virtual Voice could ever make me feel that way … Please write many Roman books … that voice is like chocolate ….
Nevermind I didn’t read far enough down.
Long ago and far away…. I bought Kid 2 writing with symbols. 1. I could make PECs and 2. He discovered transcribing news videos and listening to them.. he was 9ish. Then he would hear a word, come and find me, I would sound it out and off he would go.
As a tool for those who are disabled in all its various ways a monotonous voice is a tool.
Lazy is flipping readers every other chapter based on POV and I find indie authors do this and it’s very bad.
Good readers or teams make a story come to life and worth the money spent.
My kid would agree as we listen to Forthright’s stories you recommended once upon a time.
Yeah, I’ve read a book in KU that I’m pretty confident was at least partially written with Chat GPT. I was very disappointed by the book and later it occurred to me that parts of it read like it was AI generated, very flowery and smooth and vaguely off putting. I haven’t tried any of the author’s newer releases because of that.
The voice actor sounds very much like the voice in my head when reading the chapters. He is a good fit for me.
AI art has mostly been generated from scraping other sites for art, without notice or attribution. AI art is mainly theft.
Hi Julia,
The authors have spoken against it before, so this is just a continuation of that discourse 🙂 https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/ai-usage/
Congratulations on your new reader.
1. I live in Western New York, is Roman’s name supposed to be pronounced (Row mon), or (Row Man)?
2. Can Chris please work on the Russian lilt, he had it in the line with “Petor” but lost it. It’s the family accent, adds European mystery, and a little bit sexy.
Thank You for your No AI voice policy!!!! I listened to the AI Voice clip and was falling asleep within 2 minutes. It has no soul. I felt like I was listening to a boring mandatory college lecture. Being mildly visually impaired I have connections in the Blind community. I have heard some awful & good computer voices over the years. AI voice is good for emails, and cold information like owners manuals, and medical websites where inflection and emotion are not desired. But for things to fuel the imagination only a human voice will do. So thank you for your decision.
With Luv from one of your Avid Audio Listeners.
Roman’s name is Russian, the pronunciation is correct in the voice clip 🙂. Here is another sample https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6u9YaV4EQc&ab_channel=Voxifier
As for his accent, a deliberate choice is made to have it be subtle (in accordance to the book canon, which describes it as “a light Russian accent”). You can hear it in the way he pronounces certain words, but it’s intentional to not have it at caricature levels.
Kathy, as a Russian, our accent is not lilting in any way. 🙂
I really like Chris’ voice. However, Graphic Audio has spoiled me. I have all the books in paper, some of the books on digital, all the books on single-narrator audio, and all of the GA books out so far. I think I need to cut back, so does Chris work with GA?
(I’d still like Burn for Me in hardcover, though)
As far as I can tell using the search function on their website, Chris Brinkley has not voiced characters for Graphic Audio 🙂.
A reminder here that GA are their own business, they buy adaptation rights from the authors, then make their own creative and business choices and release their own product.
The dramatised versions are different than the audiobooks produced by authors and their publishers, and will never replace the latter 🙂.
Thanks!
First, let me say that I LOVE the sample of Roman’s voice…it is exactly how I have always ‘heard’ it in my mind! 🥰💕💕
Reading the comments on this post has been very interesting, and I agree: storytelling from actual human beings (especially HA) is so much easier, clearer, and meaningful to read than than from AI. I re-read (and enjoyed) the original HA snippet again, but I just couldn’t get thru the AI snippet (boring, too flowery, too confusing, and it totally missed capturing Roman’s character.)
Reading these comments gives me a lot of hope. Maybe I’m just being optimistic, but it seems like no matter how much AI-generated ‘writing’ is out there, readers who actually enjoy reading good stories (and I do believe that is most of us) will have the last word. I am very hopeful that truly good human writers [looking at you HA!] will always be successful, no matter what happens with AI.
“… entwined in a dance of ancient secrets?” That’s Bulwer-Lytton Prize-worthy! AI is apparently good for unintentional comedy, at least.
I really don’t like AI used for creative purposes. Where does it leave us in the future? I might be old but it’s scary to think about. There are programs generating AI people on YouTube that are perfect. Don’t we have enough issues with looking perfect? Used to be models were unrealistic, now it’s AI. It’s in our nature to rush forward with something new, cool and seemingly useful without considering the consequences. I shudder at the thought.
Please reconsider for your blind/visually impaired readers. They are already constrained by the lack of books in Braille, lack of literacy in Braille, and lack of books available in any accessible format. Most of them listen to books sped up to the fastest setting anyway, so, most emotional inflection is lost.
If you have a choice of no audio or audio by AI, please go with AI. Just as you have audio books out in different formats already, having AI read does not preclude you from having graphic audio later.
HeatherBT, Mom to Calli and Acer, both Braille and Audio readers.
As the blog article mentions, there’s a caveat to all this where Virtual Voice may become a necessary tool for visually impaired readers who otherwise wouldn’t have access to the written text.
As for Ilona Andrews in particular, they all exist in audio format, e-format, print- no effort is spared to make them as accessible as possible, including selling rights for translation to other languages and adaptations 🙂.
This won’t change and fortunately the choice isn’t between no audio and AI audio.
Ohhh yay! Chris! Big fan. Um noway to AI for reading books. I’ve tried before and it was so boring and I couldn’t connect with it like I can a human narrator. They can do different voices and put in the human emotion that AI just can’t. I understand using AI for many things but not this. Some people might be okay with it but I think majority just won’t. I think if there was a price point then maybe people would deal with it but I want quality over saving a buck. So glad y’all said nope lol.
He pronounces the protagonist’s name wrong too! You’ll want to fix that first: Ro-MAN.
Roman is pronounced correctly in the audio sample- it’s a Russian name, different pronunciation than the Western one. Here is another reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6u9YaV4EQc&ab_channel=Voxifier
Is that how Roman’s name is pronouced? I always thought it was like Roman pizza 😀
Yes, the author’s intent is for Roh-mán, accent on the second syllable as the voice clip has it, not like a citizen of the Roman empire. It’s a Russian pronunciation, as he has a Russian name 🙂
Y’all struck on something I work with in my day job! Full disclosure: I work at Google and my opinions are my own and do not represent Google in any way.
By definition, AI is software that ingests large amounts of training data, analyses patterns and uses it to make predictions or new content. For example, it’s great for generating software code, summarizing long documents or helping to write a better email. Neural networks is fascinating, and way above my knowledge area, but that’s what allows any Generative AI to make new text, songs etc.
Once upon a time, people worried that photography would make painting obsolete, or movie theaters would close down all of the playhouses. My opinion is AI is a tool or potential new medium, but by its very nature can’t replace human creativity or aptitude. And it isn’t intended to. While most of us see AI as Gemini chat or Midjourney or ChatGPT, most AI is being used by companies to make their products better.
I have some concerns about what is used to train models, ethical companies are only use public domain and non-copywriter information, but there isn’t any regulation or legislation in place to make that happen. I’m sure there will be though.
Happy to answer question, but this is probably more of an info-dump than anyone wanted. lol.
I have a few thousand words regarding AI and the theft (“cyborging”?) of creativity – some positive, much not positive. Summation: House Andrews and all the living, breathing authors, artists, etc.: Thumbs UP. AI: Thumbs Down.
1. The virtual voice sample from Angel’s Flight: It’s actually not bad. It’s much better than Text-To-Speech, and honestly I have heard worse human narrators. (Check the sample for Edit Mod R )
This will be invaluable for authors who cannot afford the up-front $thousands$ of hiring a narrator outright, and who don’t yet have the sales history to convince a narrator willing to invest the time/work to do a revenue split.
2. WOOT for Chris’ sample! I’m looking forward to hearing him do Roman’s angry muttering. This is the same Chris that does Simon, yes? Is it Christopher Crutchfield Walker of “The Wire” and “House of Cards” fame? ( https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3609049625/?ref_=nmvi_vi_imdb_3 )
3. Is Roman meant to be pronounced roe-Mahn, as Chris does it? (I remember when the publisher had Renee pronounce Simon as sai-Mahn, and House Andrews said on livestream it should just be plain Si-mon.)
4. I can’t see any difference in the Clean Sweep images, other than expanding and filling the canvas/background. What else is different?
Hi Carrie,
Whilst I understand your stance and preferences, there is also the moral dimension of loss/devaluation of human vocal artist work and the virtual programs being trained on human data which wasn’t shared with consent. I have edited the shared link you provided, as we don’t want to direct criticism towards any particular narrator in the comments. Thank you for your understanding 🙂
The Roman narrator is Chris Brinkley- he has not voiced any characters for House Andrews before, and is not Christopher Crutchfield Walker, but is set to do wonderful angry muttering 😀
Roman is meant to be pronounced as in the audio sample, yes, it’s a Russian pronunciation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6u9YaV4EQc . I think there’s also a bit of confusion there, as Saiman is not intended by the authors to be pronounced as “Simon”.
The difference is in the background image, but the AI went way above content fill.
Hi ModR!
Sorry, I didn’t get an email note that you had replied – it must be something in my settings or filters…I fired up the new GA Book5 this morning and it hit me that I hadn’t seen a response about “which Chris is it” and came to look.
I totally understand and empathize on the current shake-up, dread, and possibility of work loss the narrators are facing due to AI. My eldest son wants to be a narrator…we’re staring down the Curran-sized, saber tooth-filled throat of this issue live and in-person daily here at the house.
I just worry about what all this very vocal anti-AI commentary says to the (disabled, elderly, poor, etc) people whose lives are being/soon will be significantly improved by AI.
When they hear/read what the AI boycotters here are saying, are they hearing “The issues you struggle to overcome on a daily basis that AI could solve/is solving are less important than my audiobook hobby”? Are they hearing “You don’t matter”?
It’s probably not a discussion to have down here in the comments, though.
Did I get confused about the Simon pronunciation? (It’s probable – I have ADHD.) I could swear they addressed this at one point during a Live, and Gordon always pronounces it just “Si-mon” when he’s talking, like the same as “Simon & Garfunkel” or “Simon Cowell”. Ah well.
Could you pass a request through to the powers that be at Graphic Audio asking them to post a *full* list crediting the actors and which characters they voice on each book’s webpage at GA?
Or if that would be too troublesome, maybe they could just send the master list to you to copy/paste it here on the blog, so the Horde could have somewhere to reference it?
They list off a *few* of the actor/character pairings at the end of each audiobook (and then just a simple list of the remaining actors), but there’s nowhere that we can hear/read the *full* list. Inquiring Horde minds want to know, lol!
I have passed the request on and I think it will be accommodated by GA! 🙂
As has been stated previously by others, I think AI can be useful for people with disabilities and for things like textbooks, summarizing reviews (Amazon clearly labels their summary of product reviews as AI generated) and party helpers (brilliant of mom to use it in that way!).
At the very least, all AI products should be labeled as AI so you know what you’re getting.
Last week, I was tempted by a Facebook ad into downloading an app I had not heard of for audiobooks. The first couple of chapters were interesting but predictable. That’s fine, I like predictable sometimes. But the longer the book went on, the more holes showed up in the story. And the narration was definitely AI even though it wasn’t flat. (The same happy female voice that you sometimes hear on Facebook reels was the narrator.) She was perfectly cheerful even when the main character was crying over her cheating fiancée and his pregnant girlfriend. 😄 It sounded ridiculous since it did not match the tone of the story. I stopped listening at chapter 4 and deleted the app. Nowhere did I find any reference to AI, yet it had to be. The holes in the story and some references made about the FMC’s career demonstrated a clear lack of understanding that humans would have intuited.
Chat GPT. vomitous. What scares me is how many people , sigh, can’t seem to tell good writing from bad…
Also thank you for the Elemental Vampire hint
Well, you can rest assured that the AI “reading” the book is not sentient.
The writing is flat. Ever try to eat unsalted, cold oatmeal? That’s AI
Like most people, not all technical advances are good … not all of them are bad. I can see a place for AI in some industries more than others (definitely not writing and music). I remember when Kindle came out … I loved it from the start and to me it was a positive change. Packing and moving my library was a major undertaking.
I see some parallels to the days when outsourcing jobs started. There was all the hype of it being good for the “global economy” and similar nonsense. In the end, outsourcing hurt quite a number of workers regardless of how much it helped the global economy. I see very little benefit for most people, overall.
Another area would be audio books. Definitely a need for them in certain situations but they will never be a choice for me as long as I can read. I develop my own voices in my mind when I read and an audio books just messes that up for me. But this I think of as a good technology because it helps any number of people, as others have mentioned.
Finally, it comes down to not being a question good or bad but more a question of “just because we can do something, does that mean we should do something”. In my mind, the obvious answer is no … but it’s a fine line … and that’s just my opinion.
The one thing several pointed out which is very pertinent to me … style of writing. I think all of us dedicated Ilona Andrews fans could recognize their books even without the author name being on it. AI’s ability to copycat such things is what scares me … and why I think it needs to be kept out of certain areas.
I hear you on preferring reading to audiobooks – I’m much the same – but my spouse prefers audio. He’s a bit picky with narrators but will listen to almost anything read by the ones he likes. Some of them I listen to by dint of being around him and the audiobooks that are more of a performance than just reading are the best, imo. I’ve heard one or two that had more than one person to accommodate all the voices. It’s probably as close as we’re likely to get these days to radio shows like they were before TV.
PS – I like the voice for Roman, but Evdokia sounded a little…shrill, I think? Maybe it’s an internal bias but I preferred Ilona’s voice for her. Perhaps it’s the cadence of the complaints to/about Roman 😉
Oops … didn’t realize how much I was babbling until I saw it posted. Sorry about that.
Just like the text to voice, the AI/Chat GPT generated paragraphs lack any emotion, human understanding, or sense of timing/rhythm. To me, that is what truly distinguishes it from real writing or voicework. Sure, people can read the garbage, or listen to the flat/emotionless voice, but if you want to have your mind, heart and soul engaged, it takes a real human to do that.
I love the variability of Chris’s character voices, great choice!! And I could not agree more about the flat or overly embellished nature of … well, pretty much all AI-generated creative efforts. I imagine machines will be able to completely replace us eventually, but not until they’re fully sentient and able to experience the human condition 😉
My employer has an entire series of trainings read by an unknown type of virtual voice and a synthesized video of a “human just like me TM”
It is seriously creepy, with an uncanny valley effect that I can’t put into words. Allegedly this was done because people pay more attention to trainings read by a human, but I would argue that this is worse than asking me to review straight text on a powerpoint.
I end up spending all of my training staring in horrified fascination at the virtual simulacrum trying to catch it in the act of being inhuman. So far I’ve retained nothing, two more virtual trainings to go.
The virtual voice started out just too slow, and then came the Chinese woman, a recent immigrant, who didn’t have an accent. And then I stopped listening. I am willing to pay for books, narrations, art, and music created by actual people. I can see the advantage of virtual voice for people who have impaired vision, especially when books voiced by real narrators aren’t available.
In re: the AI voice – ‘I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that..’ springs immediately to mind. Not in a good way….
Chat GPT is a program that takes existing texts and words with are stored in databases on computers and puts them together in a sentence. The words and texts were put there by humans. It’s like cutting letters from 1 million books to make one.
I am scared that I will inadvertently buy an AI book and not even notice. It feels like I now gotta bet everything by having others recommend books, and I got no resources I can get to do that myself.
To begin, honestly, I don’t listen to audio books as the voices are always wrong. The virtual voice actually sounded better to me, if I had to listen to an audio book, precisely because it is flat and I know it’s fake so it doesn’t bother me so much.
I think some of the offerings on Kindle Unlimited are already AI generated. It can write a scene, but the character, emotion and feeling is missing. That’s why I skim a lot, and then come back to IA, there is something missing, and I cannot connect to it
Using AI to create something you offer for sale is the height of plagiarism. If I ever find out an author is using AI to write his/her books, that author will then be blacklisted by me. AI is ok for one’s own personal enjoyment; using it to sell creative endeavors is just gross.
I love Chris Brinkley!! He’s so talented. He’s read a lot of Penny Reid’s books, that’s where I first heard him. He’ll be perfect for Roman!! Can’t wait to hear it!
I adore well-acted/voiced audiobooks—but I’ve also relied on Apple’s “Spoken Content” screenreader capabilities to read ebooks and other digital content to me for ~5 years now (specifically, the “Karen” and “Tom” voices), so this trend is kind of an odd one for me to watch, since I’ve essentially had an automated voice narrate books not available as audiobooks to me for years.
Possibly most relevant—Even though more nuanced/advanced voices are available (the ‘enhanced’ and ‘premium’, I still use the slightly stilted (compared to newer versions) original Karen voice. I’m not alone in this! Several of my peers who use screenreaders have an attachment to a particular voice or another that they’ve used for a long time.
And while I’ve always thought of this feature as an unbelievable boon for making content I couldn’t otherwise consume accessible, in the context of this post, I can see how it’s deeply worrying for the audiobook industry, because my experience is proof of how quickly you can get used to a flat voice reading. Though how much of there we “the alternative was nothing” I can’t say.
I do think audiobook listeners are in the minority of readers? And I don’t know about anyone else but I’ve definitely followed narrators I’ve really liked and bought books I wouldn’t have otherwise — just as I’ve not purchased or set aside ones with narrators whose voices grate. I think that idea of specific voices will be kind of interesting to see.
Oh, that’s _not_ how Shinar is supposed to be pronounced? I have been saying that same way… Anyway, yes, that AI voice is bad, dull and bland. I can put up with TTS when I need it to read a book for me while I’m otherwise occupied. Actually I like the TTS voices better: less inflection maybe, but less uncanny valley too.
Fwiw before you feed the beast with an offering of your writing, please be aware that it may never forget (depending on the version of chatGPT you used). And it may spit it out, word for word with the right prompt. And unless you have a norobots setting going, a version of GenAI is likely every word on this website. You probably have enough words /content to finetune an AI with. I bet if you finetuned an AI with your collected works, it could imitate you better, just like a law-trained AI can match an A- student but ChatGPT by itself is only a C+ law student. (Both of those are scary for various reasons).
I don’t always understand why we are in such a hurry to make an entity that could replace us. Or worse, someday getting good stories out of AI will be our skill, like playing the harp, and we’ll rejoice. And I really dislike how this simple litany of facts makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist.
Nineran, it scraped all of our books. It was illegally fed our entire catalog from a pirate site. That train has sailed.
I’ve encountered quite a few books that are clearly not entirely written by the given author. One book in particular supposedly written by a woman had portions no woman could write – it was clearly written by a man. Now I wonder if it was an AI. I think some of these authors have a story line but are in such a hurry they cut corners using AI, or ghost writers. After encountering several of these dismal novels thru Amazon recommendations I no longer trust them.
I would much rather reread great books like House Andrews writes!
Just to say I REALLY appreciate the time and effort you put in. Thank you!
yeah I already knew ai voices were bad and not for me. In middle school I was having a hard to reading one of my assigned literacy books because it’s was sooooo boring and when something is boring I have a hard time concentrating my mind tries to go off somewhere else and it didn’t help that I had only been diagnosed with ADHD and was only getting treated for that I pretty much had to learn how to cope with my autism myself because at them time autism want well known by the time it was becoming more familiar and I was diagnosed in high school Is already developed some good coping skills.
So my bff suggested using an AI reader app she used for such situations. growing up my dad would read to me in a wide variety of voices(preferred him over mom as she had a very limited no m number of voices) and he discovered audiobooks on tape(before audible became a thing because of the tapes the whole family jumped on audible when it came out) so listening to AI read was frustrating. At the time it was actually worse than the sample provided here if you can believe it. it would have random pauses where they weren’t needed and longer continuation where it needed pause. but the monotone emotionless voice was the same. I always listen to samples of audiobooks before I buy as the have been narrator I just couldn’t listen to for one reason or another too high voice or w narrator that was emotioless and while I could tell it was a person over ai it was too close to sounding like ai. but that like a very low percent of narrators and I won’t name names even if I could remember which. but I did pass on some good looking audiobooks and just read the ebook or physical book over listening to the audiobook in a few cases.
I have a series that I love and have been reading for many years. Last year another book in the series was released and I got the audio version. It was an AI voice. Nothing about it being an AI voice was mentioned and it sounded similar to previous books but I couldn’t make it through the book. I haven’t gone back to that series since.
Blind woman weighing in! OK, so I’ve been blind since toddlerhood, which means I grew up with synthesized speech. It’s come quite a long way since the 90s, I must say. Be that as it may, when it comes to my audiobooks, I will always prefer a human’s voice.
Synthesized speech can have inflection and show a limited range of emotion, but in the end, it’s a computer program. Many text to speech programs have a dictionary where you can phonetically spell things out so it isn’t so jarring to hear. For example, I seriously wanted to slap VoiceOver when it went through that phase of saying “tornado” like tor-raw-do.
AI is great: it’s what allows me to write this comment even though I can’t see the screen. When it comes to creative fields, though, humans have no equal.
I am anti AI in a creative space. The only thing I really approve of technology being used for is medical advancements. I hope when it comes to books the public will want more than cheap, that they will want quality. I feel confident that a large part of the book loving community will not be willing to give good authors up. The BDH isn’t going anywhere.
I can relate to Gordon so well… :(( I HATE and cringe at the AI voice so much, I cannot tell you….
So, a bit of background: in my country due to some unfortunate 50 or so years of a very well-known regime in the 20th century, we had a lot of TV channels (nature, history, whatever floats you) even up till last year dubbing their content in a language that is a remnant of that regime. Due to recent events in Europe, our country finally manned up and made a law – everything that’s originally non-national language needs to either stay in original language (99% of the time it is English) or be dubbed in our national language.
You can see where this is going, right.. right? Instead of using normal people for dubbing, the channels have purchased an AI that translates and voices automatically. And it is horrendous…
First of all, zero emotion. And, let me tell you, I cannot listen to nature channels in such a sociopath dub for more than a few mins… Second, in our language, we conjugate numbers as well to match what they’re describing (so, numbers that describe feminine and masculine/singular and plural nouns will differ in their endings) and that stupid AI cannot conjugate those accordingly (it just leaves number in what would be the basic form, so it is incredibly frustrating to listen to because it doesn’t sound logical), and I cannot even begin to tell you – the history channels are ruined now as well…
I have listened to an AI read novel to see what that was like and it is weird and soulless.
From the example you provided so is the writing.
I am not at all a fan.
So going forward I would like the pop up…I AM NOT A ROBOT
before I purchase an audio book🤯
Imo, I am not interested in reading something that somebody didn’t even have the interest in writing themselves. As Miyazaki once said, “[AI] is an insult to life itself.”
ChatGPT never met an adjective or adverb it didn’t love. On subreddits where people post travel itineraries for feedback you can spot the ones made by ChatGPT instantly just from the adjective abuse.
I don’t think I would enjoy listening to an entire book narrated by Virtual Voice, though I can see why some people might find it useful. I will continue to buy audiobooks because to me a good narrator makes a big difference to the experience.
A series that I love recently had the final book released. Prior to the release I did a full reread of the series via the audiobooks. The narrator (Khristine Hvam) is amazing and really brings the characters, and especially their accents, to life with the voices that she uses. To such a degree that I actually had trouble starting the final book on Kindle because my internal reading voice did not compare.
The narrator is everything with audiobooks. I can barely listen to some (despite the book itself being good) when the narrator isn’t on target. So…. I guess what I’m saying is nope on the AI audiobook.
I recently watched a YouTube channel in which the creator lamented not having any room com movies. So she got chatGPT to write 3 rom com scripts. They were so “bad” that when she and her friends got together for the first cold read, they rewrote the entire scripts.
Another YouTuber that I watch has been playing around with image generating programs for a while now. He decided to not do it anymore a couple of months ago. It generated an image that he could not decide if it was copyright infringement or not. So he said he did not want to cross that line for ethical reasons. Other YouTubers spoke of the legal reasons and ramifications. One spoke about the possibility of losing the income from a video that took a month to do, because someone else said it was their work, not his. He said it took three years to prove to YouTube officials that it was him standing in front of the camera, talking about the things around him and reacting to what was happening.
Sorry, that was a long rant
RoMAN? Is the emPHAsis on the right sylLAble? lol Sorry but I’m just having a hard time with it. But he is your character and book!
Loving the story as always!!
Reading the sample, I am certain I have read Chat GPT novels and it explains why I have found myself skimming or not finishing stuff – it reads just like that and it doesn’t sound natural.