Dead Reading Audio Books
With the continuous improvements and milestones being made in AI technology, this was just a matter of time:
AI company ElevenLabs..... is bringing digitally produced celebrity voice-overs of deceased actors, including Judy Garland, James Dean and Burt Reynolds, to its newly launched Reader app. The company said the app takes articles, PDF, ePub, newsletters, e-books or any other text on your phone and turns it into voice-overs.
Yup, I saw this coming.
While it is very creepy, it's also extremely cool.
Apparently, if they have a recording of a voice that's lengthy enough to gather all the pertinent info (i.e. tone, pitch, inflection, patterns, pauses, etc.), AI can generate a full catalog/dictionary of words & phrases.
“ElevenLabs’ new partnerships are all well within the realm of what the law allows. An estate will get a considerable amount of money from licensing and agreements. It’s not unlike a company negotiating a copyright deal to use a popular song by Queen in an ad. The record company also could in theory say no, no matter how much money they’re offered.”
(David Gunkel, Professor, NIU)
So..... the big question..... what voice of the deceased would I select to narrate a book I'm reading.
President Lincoln (but that ain't happening because no recording of his voice exists)
President Eisenhower
Sean Connery
Brett Somers
Alex Trebek
How about you? What would your top 3 be?
Grace & Peace & Love to you all -
Matt
p.s. here's just one of the many troubling sides about AI voice generation:
