The London based company ElevenLabs has introduced a technology that mimics the celebrity voices of Judy Garland and Laurence Olivier for audio-book narration. Launched by two Polish entrepreneurs, the innovation bridges the literary world with the legendary protagonists of our creative industries. The avid listeners of audiobooks are now able to access the archives of celebrity legacies through their bookshelves. A characteristically artificially intelligent concept that challenges our categorisation of the past and present. AI yet again manages to challenge how we engage with literature, broadening the possibilities and remodelling our literary horizon.
Audiobooks narrated by their immediate author often receive mixed reactions. While some authors project a vivid and tangible account of their story, other listeners suggest that authors, being talented literary professionals, should refrain from reciting their novels in a bid that they sometimes fall short of their writing skills. Thinking as such argues that the development of specialised AI generated audio narration can enrich the story at hand. An audio experience that draws on a more collaborative type of curation, with both the author and narrator selected and specialised in offering a more varied and textured listening experience, ultimately diversifies the shelves available to audiobook listeners. Furthermore, AI does help some authors in saving time and money and helping a publisher meet their accessibility objectives.
Although it is argued to provide a more convincing narration, AI technology is not without controversy. A contentious topic in the creative industries, AI continues to rival our unique human capabilities, and now our identities. While this has provoked outrage in Hollywood, with celebrities such as Tom Hanks, Stephen Fry, will.i.am advocating for the protection of their jobs against the rivalling technology, AI is here to stay and continues to shape our creative landscape. Scarlett Johansson recently criticised OpenAI’s launch of a chatbot with a strikingly similar voice to her own. Clearly, there are copyright challenges that will occupy the frontiers of AI audio narration, ones which should perhaps take precedence before the enrolment of such technology.
Similarly, the use of AI to manipulate and replicate the voice of deceased celebrities such as Wizard of Oz’s renowned Judy Garland, and the British actor and director Laurence Olivier confronts us with an interesting debate about the ethics and sentiments attached to listening to non-sentient voices. Non-conscious, it is often argued that how does AI, without life experience and a moral agenda, enliven a story that is dependent on its engagement with human imagination? Assuming that most human narrators are capable at least at a basic level of detecting literary cues for emotion or emphasis, we may ask the question as to whether AI audio can also read the nuances of literature with substantial accuracy? The reviews suggest that although constantly evolving, the technology still fails to recognise the implicit subtext inferred by a dash – a change of tempo, or differentiation between characters. Therefore, although AI technology responds to our cult fascination and loyalty to the great and famous celebrities, it satisfies this at a surface level and fails to convey their iconic (and human) spirit with adequate depth and expression.
So, where some suggest the AI characterisation of celebrity voices may grab the interests of the curious listeners, the bored listeners and the celebrity fans, it is still possible to identify the immutable difference between a human curated and an AI curated audio experience. While AI continues to hone its skills, imitating human beings in more sophisticated and persuasive ways, the difference between us and them in audio narration may be a gap that is closing. As this is inevitably the case, perhaps the audiobook enterprise may have to encourage a more compelling cohort of human narrators in order to compete, not with AI’s voice box, but with the legacy of the human character that AI impersonates.
