Apple Books launches new suite of AI-narrated audiobooks

Apple has launched a raft of audiobooks narrated by artificial intelligence to its Apple Books platform, but maintains it “remains committed to celebrating and showcasing the magic of human narration”.

According to The Guardian, which said the tech giant had “quietly” uploaded the text-to-speech content in “an attempt to upend the lucrative and fast-growing audiobook market”, Apple was due to launch the project in mid-November, but delayed it.

Now, a search of the Apple Books platform of “AI narration” reveals a number of titles including Chasing Rainbows by Mona Ingram, Dark Water by Evan Graver and Easter in Edinburgh by Stephanie Taylor. The majority of the listings appear to be audiobook versions of self-published books.

Under each title’s “Publisher Description” it reads: “This is an Apple Books audiobook narrated by a digital voice based on a human narrator.” The AI-generated narrations are respectively in what the organisation calls “soprano” and “baritone” voices.

Apple’s website reads: “More and more book lovers are listening to audiobooks, yet only a fraction of books are converted to audio – leaving millions of titles unheard. Many authors – especially independent authors and those associated with small publishers – aren’t able to create audiobooks due to the cost and complexity of production. Apple Books digital narration makes the creation of audiobooks more accessible to all, helping you meet the growing demand by making more books available for listeners to enjoy.”

It continues that Apple Books digital narration “brings together advanced speech synthesis technology with important work by teams of linguists, quality control specialists and audio engineers to produce high-quality audiobooks from an e-book file” and that “Apple has long been on the forefront of innovative speech technology, and has now adapted it for long-form reading, working alongside publishers, authors and narrators”.

“Digitally narrated titles are a valuable complement to professionally narrated audiobooks, and will help bring audio to as many books and as many people as possible. Apple Books remains committed to celebrating and showcasing the magic of human narration and will continue to grow the human-narrated audiobook catalogue.”

Apple’s website says the feature is initially only available for fiction and romance books, using ‘Madison’, a soprano, or ‘Jackson’, a baritone. The non-fiction and self-development narration program “is kicking off and will be available more widely in the future”. 

The Guardian says that in recent months, Apple approached independent publishers as potential partners, including some in the Canadian market, but that “not all agreed to participate”.

It continues that authors were informed that Apple would shoulder the costs of production and writers would receive royalties from sales. Publishers involved in the project were allegedly required to sign non-disclosure agreements.

Guidelines listed as part of Apple Books’ Digital Narration help page stipulate that: “For your e-book to be eligible for the program: You must have the audio rights for the title and the title must not be in the public domain; It must be English language; The e-book must be available for sale on Apple Books; The e-book must be reflowable (not fixed layout or Multi-Touch) and that “ideal genres include fiction and romance. Erotica is not accepted.”

It continues: “Our service is currently optimised for narrative, reflowable English-language e-books, so avoid submitting titles with complex formatting elements like images, illustrations or tables. Titles with a lot of charts, diagrams and other visual elements are not optimal for digital narration.”

The digitally narrated audiobook creation takes approximately one to two months once the request is submitted to Apple, according to the company, which says that “all content will go through our digital narration review process to ensure the best quality for customers. If quality standards are not met, the content will not be published and partners will be notified”.

Its official partners in the production of the digital narrations are Draft2Digital, “an approved partner for indie authors” and Ingram CoreSource, “an approved partner for publishers.” The Bookseller has reached out to Apple for comment. 

Last year Google Play Books rolled out its ‘auto-narrated audiobooks’ technology. It was broadly welcomed by publishers, who said it presented real opportunities for accessibility. However, there was scepticism about the quality of auto-narrated content.

This week author and journalist Mark Piesing wrote a column for The Bookseller saying AI narration is “inevitable”.