I have listened to thousands of hours of audiobooks (it’s my job), so perhaps it’s not a surprise that I sense the wrongness of AI voices. Capturing and conveying the meaning and sound of a book is a particular skill that requires talent and soul. I can’t imagine “Archie,” for instance, understanding, much less expressing, the depth of character of David Copperfield. But here we are at a strange crossroads in the audiobooks world: Major publishers are investing heavily in celebrity narrators — Meryl Streep reading Ann Patchett’s “Tom Lake,” Claire Danes reading “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a whole cast of Hollywood actors (Ben Stiller, Julianne Moore, Don Cheadle and more) on “Lincoln in the Bardo,” to name a few. Will we reach a point where we must choose between Meryl Streep and a bot?
The main issue is, naturally, money. Using disembodied entities saves time and spares audiobook producers the problems of dealing with human beings — chief among them is their desire to be paid. This may explain why so many self-published books are narrated by “Madison” and her squad of readers…