Edward Herrmann, a prolific actor who narrated dozens of audiobooks, has been dead for almost a decade, but that hasn’t prevented him from being the voice of several recent audiobooks.
Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg for The Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Herrmann’s latest work is generated by DeepZen Ltd., a London-based artificial-intelligence startup that was given access to the actor’s past recordings with his family’s permission. From that trove, DeepZen said it is able to generate any sound and intonation that Mr. Herrmann would have used if he were narrating these new books himself.
“We felt it was an amazing way to carry on his legacy,” said Rory Herrmann, a Los Angeles restaurateur and Mr. Herrmann’s son. He said he was astonished when he first listened to an audiobook featuring his father’s synthetic voice. “It’s a wow moment,” he said.
AI’s reach into audiobook narration isn’t merely theoretical. Thousands of AI-narrated audiobooks are available on popular marketplaces including Alphabet Inc.’s Google Play Books and Apple Inc.’s Apple Books. Amazon.com Inc., whose Audible unit is the largest U.S. audiobook service, doesn’t offer any for now, but says it is evaluating its position.
The technology hasn’t been widely embraced by the largest U.S. book publishers, which mostly use it for marketing efforts and some foreign-language titles. But it is a boon for smaller outfits and little-known authors, whose books might not have the sales potential to warrant the cost—traditionally at least $5,000—of recording an audio version.
“From what I can see, human narrators are freaking out,” said Dima Abramov, chief executive of Speechki, an Austin, Texas-based audiobook producer that uses synthetically narrated voices.
MacDailyNews Take: Eerie. Almost as eerie as this:
The AI above seems to have been trained solely on Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Address. Future AI syntheses – voice and otherwise – will only get better as more data is fed into them.
The job-killing potential of AI in many fields is tremendous.
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Thank goodness we will never have an Apple News site narrated by well known bloviator, Ace Scenic.
Well said!
Kind of interesting. Kind of creepy. “What is real?” will soon become a pedestrian question.
Edward Herrmann isn’t a dead man walking, no, he’s already dead.
What he is, is a dead man talking.
Should we all copyright our voices? To keep thieves for stealing “us” ?
don’t talk to anyone, they will record it and use it to steal your identity.
So dead celebrities will now be endorsing products they never agreed to, political ads they didn’t believe in, swearing and cursing like they never did on earth, just so their families can make a few dollars?
I do it for my Mom . She passed from COVID