this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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I just listened to this AI generated audiobook and if it didn't say it was AI, I'd have thought it was human-made. It has different voices, dramatization, sound effects... The last I'd heard about this tech was a post saying Stephen Fry's voice was stolen and replicated by AI. But since then, nothing, even though it's clearly advanced incredibly fast. You'd expect more buzz for something that went from detectable as AI to indistinguishable from humans so quickly. How is it that no one is talking about AI generated audiobooks and their rapid improvement? This seems like a huge deal to me.

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[–] [email protected] 111 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A lot of people just aren't aware of how fast AI is moving. AI voices were pretty meh earlier this year. A lot of people working on the audiobook/voice acting scene have been talking about this though.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I recommend everyone to check the YouTube channel "two minute papers" who have being doing videos about papers on AI for the last 10 years on so to see the accelerated progress AI have. Like 5 years ago those images generating AI looked like LSD infused dreams and now they look almost perfect.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

I wish I could watch his videos but the way he talks is awful. It's like some exaggerated evolution of YouTube talk.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 9 months ago (9 children)

Ah yes, Audio AI. I can't wait for this rapidly-approaching future where you literally won't be able to trust the validity of anything your senses tell you anymore

[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Imagine the day when people post videos of the president saying literally anything with pitch perfect audio voice synth

Imagine going to prison for a generated clip of you confessing to a crime.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Once the tech is that good, a recording of your confession will be useless as evidence in court.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

...but it is already that good? The fact that celebrities are having to come out and say it wasn't them in an ad is proof enough that it can fool people

You only need to fool a jury

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Then we'll have to take more care with how jury trials are conducted. It's always been possible to fool juries, that's often a lawyer's entire strategy.

[–] xkforce 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Everything will be useless in court. Audio evidence? Worthless. Video evidence? Worthless. Physical evidence? Prove that it wasnt planted. That kind of AI is a fucking nightmare and no one really understands the danger that kind of AI poses.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

AI can't tamper with physical evidence. It can't fake financial records or witness testimony. Many kinds of audio and visual recordings will still have sufficient authentication and chain of custody to be worthwhile.

The main kind of evidence that these AI generators makes untenable are the ones where someone just shows up and says "look at this video of X confessing to Y that I happen to have," which was never a particularly good sort of evidence to base a court case on to begin with.

[–] xkforce 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Witness testimony is already a very unreliable source of evidence. And again, evidence can be planted. Hell there was doubt about the chain of custody before AI could just make up audio and video. The validity of the chain of custody boils down to the cops and government in general being trusted enough to not falsify it when it suits them.

Sufficiently advanced AI can, and eventually will, be capable of creating deepfakes that cant reliably be proven to be false. Every test that can be done to authenticate that media can be used by the AI to select generated media that would pass scrutiny in principle.

I love the optimism and I hope you're right but I don't think you are. I think that deepfake AI should scare people a whole lot more than it does.

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[–] Moneo 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

That got me thinking about when we'll hear the first case of AI generated security camera footage used to frame someone. Which leads me to wonder when it will be standard procedure for cameras to digitally sign their footage.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago

Or imagine politicians like Trump saying the most heinous stuff and then denying it saying it's fake or AI. How will people know? You won't even be able to trust your eyes or ears anymore.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Guss we'll have to resort to digital watermarking with personal certificates then.

[–] ClaireDeLuna 10 points 9 months ago

Soon the schizophrenics will become neuro-typical

[–] FooBarrington 4 points 9 months ago

Tech like this has been available for a number of years, and has most likely already been used against you. It's now getting available for the broader masses, but that might just be a blessing in disguise, since increased awareness will hopefully also make you suspicious of those cases that are already happening.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I want TTS made better with AI so that I won't need huge audiobooks filling up my phone. The epubs that I already have would serve as audiobooks when needed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If your phone is rendering TTS on the fly that's probably going to be a drain on battery.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago (6 children)

As someone who only consumes books in audiobook form this is great news for me, I tried to listen to some automatically generated audio books around 2 years ago and I found them horrible to listen to just because they sounded so off.

I'd love to be able to copy in the text of a book and get actually listenable (is that a proper word?) audiobook out of the other side for some books that will just simply never be recorded by actual people due to being too old / obscure.

I've been wanting to be able to listen to the Pelucidar books for years but they just don't exist in audio format, is there somewhere publically available that I can do this?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Just curious, but how come you only consume books in audio format? (Please forgive me if this was rude to ask.)

[–] Nukken 11 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I can't speak for OP but I do this as well. For me it's because I listen to them on the drive to/from dropping my kids off at school and I'll have it playing while I'm working or playing a game.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (4 children)

As someone who would like to do this, how well do you actually pay attention to what is going on? I'd do so much more reading if I didn't have to go back and reread paragraphs several times over because I simply can't pay attention, let alone if I'm doing something else entirely

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It depends. It definitely is easy to get distracted and need to rewind but I found that happens much less often than with sitting down and reading in text form.

Its a solid solution and I recommend you give it a try.

AudiobookBay and youtube have tons of books

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If you're interested further, check if your local library has a partnership with Libby. It's an app that you can check out audiobooks from.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I listen to audiobooks when driving as well and am PRETTY sure i have ADHD (haven’t gotten officially diagnosed yet). For me, it… β€œdistracts” the part of my brain that wants to get frustrated at all the bad drivers/traffic slowdowns. Unless things get particularly hectic, like trying to make it to an exit in time in dense traffic, it usually works great, and if I find myself not taking in certain parts, I tap a button on my audiobook app that goes back 30 seconds so I can properly understand it.

It’s a great combo, because like you, if I’m just sitting at home listening to an audiobook, I get β€œpartially bored” and start looking at random stuff online. But when driving, well, that part of my brain is focused on driving, so I don’t get bored like that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'm really reconsidering that, because I legit hate other drivers. I wanna be less annoyed by driving

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

To weigh in on the concentrating part I find if I have something to do like when I am setting machines at work which does involve thinking about what I am doing then I actually concentrate well and take in what I am listening to and absorb it. Once I have finished setting the machine and start running it which requires little to not thought (until something goes wrong) that is when I won't be able to concentrate on the book and will usually switch to music as my mind wanders off.

So for things like driving, running, cleaning, cooking etc I will often put a book on and concentrate just fine on what is being said.

With driving and running it does depend on my mood though as both those activities have a certain level of your brain switching off and running on auto pilot which is when I find myself starting to not concentrate.

I'd definitely recommend giving it a try and seeing how you find it as it helps the time fly by if you can get into it :)

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I like to read books before bed, but need darkness for a while before I have any chance of going to sleep, so me and my wife listen to 45min of audio book a night before going to sleep. Plus when we listen together there is no need to worry about getting ahead of each other and spoiling stuff.

I read books in other scenarios but that ritual is by the most time I have for reading and the most consistent as well.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Personally I mostly use audio books instead of reading because I get eye strain a lot easier than I used to. I go to an eye specialist for unrelated issues yearly, so it’s not an issue with a wrong lens prescription. It’s not a problem when I’m doing a low attention task where I can look away frequently, but for reading it sucks.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not rude at all, similar to the other responses people have given but it oa two fold really. Firstly I just don't do well with sitting and reading a book, I get bored very quickly, can't concentrate on what is happening and start re-reading sentences or pages over and over where I am not paying attention properly. Additionally after only a couple of pages it will start putting me to sleep, I guess my attention span is just not sufficient for this form of media.

As a result I never read any books until I discovered audiobooks and my love for them, I honestly just disregarded books as a form of entertainment and thought they were a waste of time until discovering this way to consumer them which wasn't until I was in my early 30s.

On top of that I now listen to them mostly at work, I work with industrial machines and the work is repetitive as fuck and having a book to listen to makes the time go a lot faster and in a lot more interesting manner. Consequently I now love books and will listen to between 6 and 10 hours a day and now listen to them when I'm doing things like cooking, cleaning or running when I am not at work.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago

That sounds pretty cool, though I'd be concerned it will suffer from the classic problem of current AI (...and humans, but that's by the by) of confident incorrectness. Like an automatic transmission can miss meanings and types of context that a human will spot, programmatically generating speech can probably mess up punctuation and flow - even the way a human reader sometimes will get part way through a sentence and realise they need to start again for it to come out right.

That said, I can't see it being a big problem for most works, just unfortunate here and there. For once it seems an AI application short on downsides! (Except for the usual economic ones for many people previously trained in the field.)

[–] rustyredox 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

There was a fairly big 40K lore channel on YouTube with a rather good AI impersonation of David Attenborough's voice and narration style/scripting. However, I just went to check it, yet it must have recently gotten hit with a DMCA and taken down. A shame really. Though I never got into 40K lore before, or the 40K franchise in general, I am a big fan of David Attenborough, and so that ended up really drawing me in to a new literary universe. However, it was a big mistake by the YouTube creator to use the name and photo likeness of Attenborough in the branding, video titles, and thumbnail art on the channel. I think without pushing that line, the AI voice with a clear disclosure could have kept the channel under the legal radar.

From the pinned comments made here, this looks to be the same creators new channel, now using a different voice, no longer based on any one real person:

[–] rustyredox 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/@AttenboroughLore

https://piped.video/@Scholarslore

https://piped.video/watch?v=JnbGL8Z6KYg

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

I’ve been getting into audiobooks in a big way recently. This is interesting but somehow seems off to me. Maybe I’ll try listening to one and have my mind changed. We’ll see!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Audiobooks are offputting to me and I strongly prefer to read text, but this seems like a great thing overall for making books more accessible to people. More people experiencing a wider range of books is good.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Audiobooks have been a great coping mechanism for my ADHD, they've also made me a better driver.

For the latter, if I listen to my music I definitely feel a bit more aggressive, whereas if it's an audiobook (and I've given myself sufficient room), I'm much more forgiving.

For the former, I can mix them with menial tasks and it makes them so much more doable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

this AI generated audiobook

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

There are also a few AI sung songs out there that are pretty good. Most of them sound pretty Autotuny, but to some extent, that can be a style. Aura, by Ghost, is a good example. If I didn't know it was ai, I would just think it was autotune.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

It sounds like a generative model to me, but it's probably the best one I've ever heard. Also, thanks for the link! I added it to my listen list!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Because it's not a new product.

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