The future of AI-generated audiobooks is here

In March, on the heels of a Danish man becoming the first person convicted of streaming fraud, MIDiA explained how AI could soon enable a golden age of audio piracy. Coupled with the fact that book publishers have been reporting that AI-generated books are being published under their names or oddly similar ones on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, there are big implications for audiobooks.

Without legislation that curtails the training of AI on copyrighted works, Amazon and Goodreads’ AI moderation game will  be a tireless whack-a-mole effort — and one made more difficult by the fact that it is relatively easy to have an AI voice record an AI-generated book as an audiobook. As we concluded in March, without  that legislation, platforms may have no choice but to create secondary markets for AI-generated content, working with authors to make disclaimers clear and ensure that they are appropriately compensated for any derivative works that may be generated.

With Inkitt, that secondary market may already be here. The San Francisco-based self-publishing platform leverages AI to identify the best performing original content and create new, personalised (i.e., derivative) works that the company then distributes and sells on its sister app, Galatea.

According to Inkitt’s “about us” section on the company’s website, “Inkitt is the world’s first reader-powered publisher, providing a platform to discover hidden talents and turn them into globally successful authors. Write captivating stories, read enchanting novels, and we’ll publish the books our readers love most on our sister app, GALATEA and other formats.”

Those last two words are arguably the most important in the company’s biography. Inkitt is not content to stick to the written word; in fact, the company is committed to branching out into audio and video to become “the Disney of the 21st century,” according to founder and CEO Ali Albazaz. With a $400 million valuation, the company may not be in Disney’s league, but it certainly has the legs to make a run at some of the bigger players in the media space.

Galatea already offers audiobooks and audiodramas, which do, in fact, appear to be read by AI voices. While video may be more difficult to wrangle than audio, Pandora’s box has been opened when it comes to written IP being spun out into audio by AI. The future of generative cross-format works may be nascent, but it is here.

Inkitt has created a vertically integrated content factory supplied by the talents of aspiring writers. While the company does offer publishing deals to writers whose works perform well on the platform, AI-generated derivative works published in multiple formats will no doubt present legal complexities, not to mention the potential of ending up in a doom loop of self-referential or nonsensical content. Fitting — or maybe ironic — that Inkitt’s AI content app Galatea takes its name from the Greek myth where a statue comes to life when a sculptor falls in love with his creation and asks a goddess to animate the statue so he can marry it. Will Inkitt authors feel the same sort of affection toward their creations?