Apple quietly launched a series of audiobooks delivered by artificial intelligence in the Apple Books app in January this year. Apple has since clarified that the AI is only available to creators, not to steal jobs.
Some publishers and professional voice actors didn’t see it that way, and felt that Apple’s launch of AI audiobooks was seriously impacting their revenue streams and Apple is using their voice samples to train the AI.
In official support documentation, Apple said, “More and more book lovers are listening to audiobooks, but only a small percentage of books are being converted to audio, which results in millions of books being inaccessible. Many creators, especially independent creators and part-time creators associated with small publishers are unable to create more audiobooks due to the cost and complexity of production.”
Apple says AI audiobooks are only available for works that are not economical for humans to broadcast, such as textbooks, low-circulation books, small presses and self-published books.
According to foreign tech media outlet Wired, Findaway launched the company, uniting many broadcast anchors in the industry to accuse Apple of collecting samples of their broadcasts to train the AI that will eventually replace them in the future.
Findaway is actually a self-publishing audio company owned by Spotify, where authors pay to produce audiobooks.
The report notes that there are currently no users in the traditional dubbing channel (where audiobooks are produced by publishers who do not charge authors) complaining about Apple’s behavior.
