Image: Dosdoce
By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
‘Concerns Around Usage and Lack of Regulations’
In September, Frankfurter Buchmesse and Dosdoce.com released a white paper titled AI and Audio: How Artificial Intelligence is Redefining the Audiobook Industry.
The goal of the article is to identify AI-related tools being used in audio for production, content creation, marketing, and distribution to identify the benefits and challenges.
The article was written as a follow-up to a Global Evolution of the Audiobook Industry Report from 2024, in which publishers who were interviewed noted that they were “dubious” about the use of AI in the audio industry.
Dosdoce’s material indicates that in the past 15 years, the international audiobook market has experienced exponential growth reaching close to US$7 billion annually. That growth may continue, but one of the biggest impediments to ongoing expansion is access to content.
With the potential of technology helping to remove some of these challenges, not only could more audiobooks be published in underserved languages and from emerging markets, but publishers with growing catalogues could produce their audio content more quickly.
These improvements might allow for that growth to continue apace, but, as publishers noted in last year’s report, there are concerns around usage and lack of regulations.
In AI and Audio, Dosdoce highlights the importance of better understanding the tools available.
From June to August, Dosdoce identified more than 160 AI entities currently being used in the audio industry, from simultaneous translation to automating pre- and post- production and to synthetic voices.
In looking at these entities, it was considered important to identify and analyze their geographical origin because of diverse regulatory practices regarding technology and to provide insight into potential issues in privacy, data sovereignty, and algorithm bias, among others.
Dosdoce reportedly also interviewed more than 40 industry specialists from various parts of the world who shared their opinions and insights about the opportunities and challenges that AI brings to the audio marketplace.
Key Assertions
Image: FBM
One of the findings of this survey plays into a much-debated issue in the publishing workforce: will AI lead to the elimination of jobs? With audio, there’s a real concern that AI could eliminate work for voice actors, translators, editors, and producers.
As Publishing Perspectives readers know, a broad coalition of creative-industry professionals since July has been pressing its dissatisfaction to the European Commission on proposed implementation measures of the EU AI Act because it does not safeguard their livelihoods and allows for AI to have an unfair advantage. (In our Frankfurt Book Fair Magazine, releasing Wednesday, look on Page 27 for an expert explication of the asserted EU AI Act implementation problems from the Börsenverein’s Jessica Sänger.)
While regulations and protections are being fought for by these parties, the study notes that AI will no doubt challenge long-standing norms in copyright and remuneration, but it will also free up professionals to work on more creative and complex aspects of work that only humans can do.
“The 160+ AI solutions and services identified in the ‘Global Audio AI-Driven Tools & Services Map’ will become an extension of the work of audio professionals to improve their productivity and creativity, not to replace it, writes Javier Celaya, founding partner of Dosdoce.com and author of that “services map.”
“When all audio professionals use the same AI tools,” he writes, “human inspiration and creativity will be the differentiating factor.”
Another key assertion of the report is that AI tools are offering significant automatization of processes, as well as new levels of efficiency and cost savings, that can be used to help develop audio markets in other countries and other languages.
Of the reported $7 billion in the international audio market, $2.6 billion of the market is said to come from North America. Close to $1.5 billion in said to be in Europe; another $1 billion in China; and $2 billion elsewhere. If AI can reduce production costs and the time it takes to create an audiobook, emerging markets will have a better opportunity of being able to grow their audiences.
“AI can democratize storytelling, giving African voices global reach through language, discovery, and new creative formats,” says Ama Dadson, founding CEO of AkooBooks and a Frankfurt “audio ambassador.”
Although this is may be a real possibility, the report notes that those time and cost savings are likely not immediately available and it could be close to two or three years before such benefits were seen.
As with artificial intelligence in other aspects of our lives and in other areas of the publishing industry, the report indicates that AI tools do help speed up some processes that traditionally take a lot of time, and that can provide benefits that publishers may want to explore.
The white paper is available here.
More from Publishing Perspectives on audio is here, more on artificial intelligence is here, and more on digital publishing is here.
In our Frankfurt Book Fair Magazine, releasing Wednesday (October 15), look on Page 28 for a report on the new Book Industry Study Group (BISG) study of actual usage levels of AI-related tools in the publishing workplace in the United States and Canada and the opinions of artificial intelligence reported by members of the industry.
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