Sounds absolutely amazing, like 99% indistinguishable from real professional voice actors to me. I couldn't find any pricing though. Anyone know what they charge for it?
As a user of audible, I do follow some authors but I've found better luck following certain voice actors. It's almost like the voice actor is the critic, and by narrating a story they are recommending it to me. Anybody can take a robot voice and apply it to anything, meaning that just because my favorite robot voice "Robot McRobot" read book XYZ doesn't mean I'll enjoy book XYZ. But because your voice is inherently scarce, you are only likely to read books that "work" for you.
I don't know what the process is for matching voice actor to book, but that process is inherently constrained because the voice belongs to a real human, and I enjoy the output of that process.
That said, while Audible is kind of expensive, I'm afraid that they'll reduce their price and move to robot voices and I'll lose interest entirely despite the cheaper price.
Just here to say the oposite. It is astonshing how far away it still is from a professional voice actor while being really good. Emotion is completely missing. Instead it seems to try to hard to express exactly that. I cant really put my finger on it. It feels predictable, flat and the timing is strange.
I think the voices are impressive, yet still uncanny and awkward. I don't want to hear them ever outside of the passing fascination of witnessing technological progress.
Frankly I like the arts strictly because they're expressed by humans. The human at the core of all of it makes it relatable and beautiful. With that removed I can't help wondering why we're doing it. For stimulation? Stimulation without connection? I like to actually know who voice actors are and follow their work. The day machines are doing it, I don't know. I don't think I'll listen.
But it's not an actual person. It's an "AI". Do you want a future where you don't hear actual people anymore? I want to listen to music, audiobooks, poetry, novels, plays, with actual humans talking, that's the whole fucking point.
I feel like you're conflating the act of creation (writing a book) versus the act of performance (narrating the book). For the former I agree with you, but for the latter? Shrug.
Personally I have hundreds of old texts that simply do not have an audio book equivalent and using realistic sounding TTS has been perfectly adequate.
It’s like having a robot that can give you a hand-job and someone saying, “well it’s a robot…” and you saying “what difference does it make?”
You tell me? What difference does it make talking with an old friend versus an ai simulation of an old friend?
What difference does it make seeing the artist who actually painted something talking about why they painted it, versus get sent an image an ai made in stable diffusion?
The difference is we are human and live in a society with other humans and we make connections with them because of their personalities, experiences, life story, emotions etc.
Perhaps you’re ok with staying alone at home with ai friends and ai generated everything but it seems quite strange to me.
Are you suggesting that you can compare a formulaic bank email to your mom reading you a bedtime story? I'm not sure you can connect those two things.
Of course, when I go and check my balance at an ATM machine, I don't mind that an actual person isn't reading me the balance. But this isn't an area where we appreciate or want another human being involved.
If you're a "normal", "well adjusted" human being, you appreciate other people, being around them, having friends, lovers, companions, talking to other humans, hearing their actual voices, getting advice and giving advice, hearing someone say "I love you" or "I appreciate you" etc. If you're a "normal", "well adjusted" human being, you will probably feel much less from having an AI voice tell you "I love you".
Of course, if you don't mind never hearing actual human voices again, and prefer just AI talking to you, then sure, go live in your shack and listen to ElevenLabs voices for the rest of your life.
I promise this comment will circle back to Elevenlabs:
When my cat died after a few months of cancer treatment, the staff of the animal hospital sent me a condolence card with comments by staff members.
On the one hand, this was a very touching, very human thing to do. On the other hand, this was presumably a work assignment that had to be passed around and completed for staff members to meet their employer's goals, while juggling the other medical and administrative duties at the animal hospital.
So whether this was a good thing or bad thing might depend on how taxing you view it from the staff member's POV.
With the audio book market: it's kind of a similar dichotomy. There's undoubtedly more human touch in the style an audio book is read by an actual human. (Though if that human touch is "stuttering awkwardly because I'm very self aware as I read, you probably wouldn't want to buy my audio book...)
However, for a human to make an audio book, you are asking someone to sit in a room for many hours, being careful not to stutter as they work through a book. If there's joy in that, maybe you see Elevenlabs as an evil company eliminating the human touch in audiobooks. If it's soulless labor, why not replace it with a machine?
I have spent three weeks of my life recording my latest book as an audiobook. (125,000 words)
It was the most difficult experience of my life, ranking way above the pain of writing the book itself, and on par with month 1 of becoming a father. (I'm not joking.)
It was also an experience I'm incredibly proud of, and do not regret for one second.
AI audiobooks are the soulless experience.
I see a use case of using AI for translating the audiobook, but generating it like that in the first place is a bit sad.
I don't really care whether this chat goes to Elevenlabs or not.
This may shock you, but people who are doing reading for audiobooks, enjoy doing it! I'm not sure you've ever listened to professionally recorded audiobooks, but there are actors who are absolutely amazing at this, and clearly doing it with passion and love. E.g. Andy Serkis doing the Lord of the Rings books on Audible.
This clearly isn't a person chained to a room, just trying to read a book without stuttering. See also some of the Discworld novels on Audible which have fantastic narration and voices. These people are both amazing and passionate.
It's not and never been soulless labour. Do you think Shakespeare was doing soulless empty labor when he was writing Hamlet? Oh no, he had to spend weeks in a dark room writing a book, we should replace him with a machine.
Artists enjoy doing their art, whether it's writing, reading out loud, playing music. Artists don't want to stop doing their art so AI can do it, and then what do they do?
>Artists enjoy doing their art, whether it's writing, reading out loud, playing music.
I guess this is probably generally true. It's really not always true, though. Neil Gaiman told an anecdote on his blog about knowing some writers who hate writing and are miserable.
The fictional TV show The Larry Sanders Show does a good job of finding comedy in the misery of showbusiness: the main character is a neurotic talk show host who is desperate for top rating, jealous of his rivals, and gets no joy from the process of making a hit tv show. I'm not saying most stars are like that, but there's probably some truth there.
I believe the op's comment was along the lines of "what difference does it make - if you can't tell the difference how can you say it makes a difference?"
To be followed up with the questions of "how will you be able to tell?" and "what are you going to do about it?"
Ok, so would you be ok with someone impersonating your girlfriends emails to you?
I.e. you're getting emails from someone impersonating your girlfriend but they're very good at impersonating her so you can't tell the difference.
Are you comfortable with that, even if you can't tell the difference? Or someone saying they are your mum, dad, or best friend?
If you buy a piece of art and it says it was by "artists name", and then it turns out it wasn't by "artists name", does it bother you? Even if you believed it was by "artists name"?
I think you understand my point. Even if ElevenLabs made a clone of my mum's voice that was impossible to tell the difference, IT would matter to me. I don't care if ElevenLabs tells me "I love you", I care if my mom tells me "I love you". And lying about it or deceiving people doesn't make it any better.
