While other factors could be at play, she told AFP, “It seems to make sense that AI is affecting all of us.”
There is no label identifying AI-assisted recordings as such, but professionals say thousands of audiobooks currently in circulation use “voices” generated from a databank.
Among the most cutting-edge, DeepZen offers rates that can slash the cost of producing an audiobook to one-fourth, or less, that of a traditional project.
The small London-based company draws from a database it created by recording the voices of several actors who were asked to speak in a variety of emotional registers.
“Every voice that we are using, we sign a license agreement, and we pay for the recordings,” said DeepZen CEO Kamis Taylan.
For every project, he added, “we pay royalties based on the work that we do.”
Not everyone respects that standard, said Eby.
“All these new companies are popping up who are not as ethical,” she said, and some use voices found in databases without paying for them.
“There’s that gray area” being exploited by several platforms, Taylan acknowledged.
“They take your voice, my voice, five other people’s voices combined that just creates a separate voice … They say that it doesn’t belong to anybody.”
All the audiobook companies contacted by AFP denied using such practices.
Speechki, a Texas-based start-up, uses both its own recordings and voices from existing databanks, said CEO Dima Abramov.
But that is done only after a contract has been signed covering usage rights, he said.
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