AI audio allows voices to be created from human narrators or machines. One can even clone and use one's own voice as a base for an AI audio "voice".
I checked out a few of the services recently. Here's my experience.
I've not used Amazon's service as that seems to only have been rolled out to a few thus far (and perhaps not yet outside the US). I tried GooglePlay's voice service on one of my books and it sounded far too robotic.
I then tried out ElevenLabs Reader. It's a promising service and, of course, the voices are among the best you'll find. However, I had some glitches and problems with the app (which seems limited to a phone platform). I had to scan a QR code and, quite frankly, it was all a bit too fiddly with too many moving parts and thus the inevitable glitches (which I seem ever plagued with). In the end I gave up with it.
Lastly, I tried Spoken. This impressed me the most. It is more straight frd than ElevenLabs (I should say it uses some of ElevenLabs' voices), allows for multiple voices (so you can have a different voice for each character), and allows a bit more editing of the text to get the voice more suited to your needs. It still has some way to go. One cannot fine tune the details, yet, though it does have a feature where you can speak words or phrases in an effort to perfect any sentence. In short, this is looking like the leading AI voice platform for writers right now. Both Spoken and the ElevenLabs Reader are still in beta, but you should be able check them out if you have already published works online.
The voices are becoming very natural these days, and with an increasing number of accents. Once more accents are added and there is a bit more ability to tweak the words and phrases, I can see AI audio becoming super popular.
For your convenience, I list the links to my works on these platforms so you can not only check out the platform but also listen to the AI audio samples and compare:
Song Child on GooglePlay
Song Child by DM Andrews - Audiobooks on Google Play
Smile in the Rain (no dialogue) on Spoken
Spoken | A Smile in the Rain by dmandrews | Spoken
Song Child (multivoice dialogue) on Spoken
Spoken | Song Child by dmandrews | Spoken
image: AI-generated
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