Meet Madison and Jackson, the AI narrators or “digital voices” soon to be reading some of the audiobooks on Apple Books. They sound nothing like Siri or Alexa or the voice telling you about the unexpected item in the bagging area of your supermarket checkout. They sound warm, natural, animated. They sound real.
With their advanced levels of realism, Apple’s new AI voices present the genuine possibility that the listener will be unaware of their artificiality. Even the phrase used in Apple’s catalogues of digitally-narrated audiobooks – “this is an Apple Books audiobook narrated by a digital voice based on a human narrator” – is ambiguous. It’s not clear from this phrase who or what is doing the narrating.
This ambiguity means that it would be possible for you to download an audiobook voiced by Jackson, start listening and think (if you think about it at all) that the voice you hear is that of a voice actor. But does this matter?
If the listener is wholly unaware that the narrator is digital, this raises some of the many ethical questions (such as that of consent) that arise whenever users are unaware that they are interacting with an AI-driven technology, rather than with a person.
The more complicated – and more interesting – problem, however, arises when we are both aware and unaware of their artificiality. When you listen to an AI narrator, you may know that you are interacting with an artificially intelligent entity. But, as so many of us already do with chatbots, many listeners will partially suspend this awareness and project ideas of personhood onto the digital voice, somewhat as we do for these books’ fictional characters.
Disruptor deception
Most worryingly, Apple’s marketing language is engaging in its own form of pretence in presenting the “digital voice” technology as harmless. The Apple Books for Authors audiobook information page emphasises the technology’s potential for democratising audiobook creation and plays down the impact on human actors. Indeed, the website explicitly positions the technology as being on the side of the little guy – Apple claims to be “empowering indie authors and small publishers”.
This pretence ultimately operates by capitalising on the multiple meanings of the word “heard”. Apple claims that “only a fraction of books are converted to audio – leaving millions inaccessible to readers who prefer audiobooks, whether by choice or necessity”. Apple’s statement that “Every book deserves to be heard” is an especially canny choice given its built-in associations with democratic representation and inclusivity.
Apple did not respond to our request for comment before publication.
It’s certainly the case that using digital narration means that authors don’t shoulder the financial costs or time burden of narrating the books themselves. And, indeed, this means more people can produce audiobooks.
Apple Books was launched in 2010. Image by Apple
