Apple's new AI-narrated audiobooks to produce 'natural sounding' but critics have a different view on it

Apple discreetly released dozens of new audiobook titles with the artificial intelligence-generated voices "Jackson" and "Madison," substituting human storytellers in a move that some have criticized as missing the essence of why people choose to listen to stories rather than read them themselves. The digital voices are "natural sounding" and "based on a human narrator," according to a statement issued by Apple. However, several of the words in the books had odd pronunciations and lacked emotion, which, according to a review by Ars Electronica, did not adequately replace the fervent readings by real people in some audiobook recordings. "Companies see the audiobooks market and that there's money to be made," Carly Watters, a Canadian literary agent, told The Guardian. "They want to make content. But that's all it is. It's not what customers want to listen to. There's so much value in the narration and the storytelling, " Critics are worried that switching to digitally produced voices, although potentially saving the corporation money and enabling speedier content creation, goes too far in cost-cutting and compromises the listening experience.

"The narrator brings a whole new range of art in creating audiobook, and we believe that's a powerful thing. They're creating something that is different from the print book, but that adds value as an art form," David Caron, a co-producer at Canada's largest audiobook publisher, told The Guardian. "When you have really great writing and really talented narration, you're coming up with something special. That's worth investing in."