NEW YORK (AFP) – As people prepare for the disruptive influence of artificial intelligence on jobs and daily life, individuals in the audio book industry believe their industry is already changing.
AI has the potential to generate human-sounding recordings at assembly-line speed, while bypassing at least some of the services of human experts who have earned a career with their voices for years.
Many of them are already experiencing a significant decline in business.
Tanya Eby has been a professional narrator and voice actor for over 20 years. In her house, she has a recording studio.
However, in the last six months, her workload has been cut in half. Her reservations are now only valid through June, while they would normally be valid until August.
Many of her coworkers have had comparable decreases.
While other variables may be at work, she told AFP that “it seems to make sense that AI is affecting all of us.”
There is no label identifying AI-assisted recordings as such, yet hundreds of audio books now in circulation employ “voices” created from a databank, according to specialists.