There’s a game changer on the horizon. Or maybe I should say it’s already arrived. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to change many aspects of our lives. It’s certainly going to affect the publishing world and writers.
A couple of months ago, I got an email from Draft to Digital telling me that Apple is offering to turn our ebooks into audiobooks using AI as the narrator. I got excited because the cost of hiring a narrator is high for an author and Apple was proposing to bear those costs. Don’t get me wrong; narrators work hard and deserve proper compensation. But the cost is prohibitive for many of us.
Then I started thinking about the downsides. As a listener of audiobooks myself, I know that a good narrator can make or break a story. In their email, Apple offered a choice of two narrators: a male baritone voice (named Jackson) and a female soprano voice (named Madison). What about accents, emotions and all the nuances in a narrator’s voice that make an audiobook so compelling?
This type of “digital narration” won’t work for every book. But after listening to a couple of samples, I have to admit it’s pretty convincing. However, I noticed in dialogue between two characters in the female narrated story there is little difference, if any, between the characters’ voices. The AI voice isn’t able to give each character a unique sound. You be the judge:
https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/id1640359031 male narrator (Jackson) From Ant to Eagle
https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/id1636546592 female narrator (Madison) Loving from Afar
My latest foray into the world of artificial intelligence is using a text to picture program to create book covers. I saw a course advertised online to help navigate through this world and decided to take it. Next to editing, book cover design is one of the greatest expenses a self-publisher faces. I figured if I could create a few of my own covers for minimal cost, I’d be ahead of the game. So I signed up to take the course.
It's quite easy to come up with images using the Mid Journey bot. Here are a couple of my results:
In the first one, I asked the bot to imagine a biracial woman and a Caucasian man smiling and holding hands with Christmas lights and decorations in the background. These are the characters in my work-in-progress “Christmas at Solace Lake”. The bot doesn't always get it right the first time. Notice in the fourth picture the man is biracial instead of the woman. The third picture is an illustration rather than a photo because I didn't specify that's what I wanted. So the bot tries to give you little of everything.
Next, I asked the bot to imagine a bride with blonde hair holding a bouquet and to make it photoreal. I may try to turn this into a new cover for my book “Her Best Man.”
This series of pictures resulted when I took one of the four original pictures I was given and asked the bot to upscale it.
It may be easy to come up with images, but it’s not that easy to come up with something I can use as a book cover. Whenever I asked the bot to make my image in an aspect ratio of 6:9 which is ebook size, I kept getting a message saying that images with 69 were banned. (Ha!) Aside from weird messages, there are other drawbacks. I still have to do the research to figure out what kind of images are suitable for my genre and what’s currently selling. This bot does not do fonts so I have to use another program for that. I also have to research which fonts are appropriate for my genre.
I can use the bot and the course I bought for 30 days and then I can decide whether or not it’s for me. I’ll keep trying to come up with something useful till then, but at the moment I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a cover designer.
I have yet to use ChatGPT but I’ve seen it in action in webinars and it’s impressive. It could be quite useful to a writer, so I’ll likely give it a shot.
Have you tried any form of AI yet? How do you feel about it? The only thing I know for sure is that AI is here to stay.
Being at the end of my career that I am, it is easy for me to be all righteous about this. But I've also seen bank tellers, many cashiers, office receptionists, and countless other jobs disappear and service jobs become disrespected not only by the public but by the people working them. While I understand the want and the need to save money (boy, do I understand it!) and I think the whole process is really interesting, I'm going to avoid the AI thing as long and as completely as I can. Thanks for sharing what you've learned, Jana.
ReplyDeleteSo, this is fascinating and frankly, AI worries the heck out of me. I'm so with Liz. I get frustrated at stores that no longer have checkout clerks and I have to do it myself. I think that stinks. People are being replaced and that's not a good thing. All that said, like Liz, I get the need to save money, but...I needs people. Great and interesting post Jana, thanks!
ReplyDeleteYep, I totally get it. Aside from potentially putting people out of work, what scares me the most is that AI could send out disinformation that could be practically unrecognizable from the truth. What are we supposed to believe? Since I wrote this blog I've decided that creating covers using AI is not for me. Frankly, I'm bad at designing covers and I would prefer to use the services of a cover designer who actually knows what they're doing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this! I didn't know about the AI narrators. That is definitely something that interests me as I know several people who will probably never read my future books because they only listen to audio books.
ReplyDeleteThe offer from Apple came through Draft 2 Digital. Your book must be self-published through D2D or directly through Apple to take advantage. I agree that a lot of people only listen to audiobooks; they're a fast growing market. But the people who only consume audiobooks are very discriminating about the quality of what they listen to. It has to be a good product.
DeleteI know there's a place for AI, and, without question, there'll be more and more places and jobs where it's used, but I still think that you just can't beat the human touch, sound, etc. Then again, I still love holding a book as opposed to a Kindle. To me, not every is better today than what we had yesterday.
ReplyDeleteThis is so true, Janie. Technology is moving so fast that sometimes we push aside things to make room for other things that aren't necessarily better.
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