Audible Enlists Narrators to Train AI for Synthetic Audiobook Production
Amazon's audiobook platform Audible invites professional U.S. narrators to train AI on their voices to generate new audiobook recordings. Participating voice actors will receive royalty-based compensation and retain approval rights over the synthetic audio.
Audible, Amazon’s audiobook division, launches a new program that invites a select group of U.S.-based voice actors to train artificial intelligence on their unique vocal styles. The company plans to use this professionally trained AI to generate new audiobook recordings, marking a significant step into generative AI for the audio entertainment industry.
Under this new initiative, narrators maintain control over how their synthetic voices are used. They have the right to approve their AI-generated voice for specific book projects and can directly edit the pronunciation and pacing of the artificial narration to ensure it meets their personal standards.
Financial compensation for participating narrators operates on a title-by-title royalty-sharing model. Whenever an audiobook is created and sold using a narrator's trained AI voice, that original voice actor receives a share of the earnings, creating a recurring revenue stream from their digital vocal clone.