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AI Melania: First lady embarks on 'new frontier' in publishing with audiobook of memoir

FOX News

EXCLUSIVE: First lady Melania Trump is launching an audiobook of her memoir using artificial intelligence (AI) audio technology in multiple languages, Fox News Digital has learned. The first lady released her first memoir, "Melania," last year. This week, she is breaking new ground by releasing "Melania, the Audiobook," which has been "created entirely" with AI. "I am proud to be at the forefront of publishing's new frontier โ€“ the intersection of artificial intelligence technology and audio," Trump told Fox News Digital. The first lady said ElevenLabs AI developed "an AI-generated replica of my voice under strict supervision, which will establish an unforgettable connection with my personal story, in multiple languages for listeners worldwide." ElevenLabs AI CEO Mati Staniszewski told Fox News Digital that they are "excited that Melania Trump trusted our technology to power this first-of-its-kind audiobook project."


The Washington Post partners with OpenAI to bring its content to ChatGPT

Engadget

The Washington Post is partnering with OpenAI to bring its reporting to ChatGPT. The two organizations did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement, but the deal will see ChatGPT display summaries, quotes and links to articles from The Post when users prompt the chatbot to search the web. "We're all in on meeting our audiences where they are," said Peter Elkins-Williams, head of global partnerships at The Post. "Ensuring ChatGPT users have our impactful reporting at their fingertips builds on our commitment to provide access where, how and when our audiences want it." The Post is no stranger to generative AI. In November, the publisher began using the technology to offer article summaries.


'Meta has stolen books': authors to protest in London against AI trained using 'shadow library'

The Guardian

Novelists Kate Mosse and Tracy Chevalier as well as poet and former Royal Society of Literature chair Daljit Nagra will be among those in attendance outside the company's King's Cross office. Protesters will meet at Granary Square at 1.30pm and a letter to Meta from the Society of Authors (SoA) will be hand-delivered at 1.45pm. It will also be sent to Meta headquarters in the US. Earlier this year, a US court filing alleged that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved the company's use of a notorious "shadow library", LibGen, which contains more than 7.5 million books. Last month, the Atlantic republished a searchable database of the titles contained in LibGen, through which many authors discovered their works may have been used to train Meta's AI models.


Are you an aspiring independent author? Spotify's wants to buy your short-form audiobook

ZDNet

Spotify wants to make it easier than ever for audiobook authors to have their work heard. The audio-streaming platform has a new website for independent authors to submit short-form books. If Spotify likes what you send, it will publish the audiobook, pay you an advance and royalties, manage book production, and distribute it to major audiobook retailers. Want to take a shot at submitting a book? Here's what you need to know.


Add indie sci-fi books to your digital library for free in the latest Stuff Your Kindle Day

Mashable

FREE AND DISCOUNTED BOOKS: The latest Stuff Your Kindle Day takes place on March 7-10. You can choose from a selection of indie sci-fi e-books for free or with a large discount. Stuff Your Kindle Day is a great time to stock up your digital library. If you've had sci-fi books on the brain, you're in luck: thanks to Indievisible you can score a variety of sci-fi books for free or at a discounted rate. This is part of the Indie Author Spring Spectacular, which runs through March 10.


British novelists criticise government over AI 'theft'

The Guardian

Kate Mosse and Richard Osman have hit back at Labour's plan to give artificial intelligence companies broad freedoms to mine artistic works for data, saying it could destroy growth in creative fields and amount to theft. It is seen as a way of supercharging the growth of AI companies in the UK. Last month Paul McCartney warned that AI "could just take over", and Kate Bush joined Stephen Fry and Hugh Bonneville in signing a petition warning that the "unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted". Mosse told the Guardian: "Using AI responsibly and well and being a world leader โ€“ all of this I agree with. It just cannot be at the expense of the creative industries โ€ฆ It is supporting one type of growth and destroying another part of growth. And it cannot be on the basis of theft of our work."


Amazon's newest Kindle Scribe is better than ever - but I'd recommend this model instead

ZDNet

Amazon just released its newest Kindle Scribe last week, but I've been using the older Scribe model for two years now, and I don't plan on upgrading any time soon. Sure, it's tempting to spring for a new device, but Amazon released a handful of hardware and software updates for the first-generation Kindle Scribe that significantly improve its functionality. I updated my original Kindle Scribe to the 5.17.2 software and am very pleased that Amazon continues to enhance this pen-enabled e-reader on a regular basis. If you haven't seen the update pop up on your own Kindle, you may have to run it manually. It's very easy for a Windows computer, but takes a bit more work for a Mac since you first need to download and install the Send to Kindle utility.


The best E Ink tablets for 2024

Engadget

E-Ink tablets have always been intriguing to me because I'm a longtime lover of pen and paper. I've had probably hundreds of notebooks over the years, serving as repositories for my story ideas, to-do lists, meeting notes and everything in between. However, I turned away from physical notebooks at a certain point because it was just easier to store everything digitally so I always had my most important information at my fingertips. E-Ink tablets seem to provide the best of both worlds: the tactile satisfaction of regular notebooks with many of the conveniences found in digital tools, plus easy-on-the-eyes E-Ink screens. These devices have come a long way in the past few years, and we're just starting to see more color E-Ink tablets become more widely available. I tested out a number of different E Ink tablets to see how well they work, how convenient they really are and which are the best tablets using E Ink screens available today. An E Ink tablet will be a worthwhile purchase to a very select group of people. If you prefer the look and feel of an e paper display to LCD panels found on traditional tablets, it makes a lot of sense. They're also good options for those who want a more paper-like writing experience (although you can get that kind of functionality on a regular tablet with the right screen protector) or a more distraction-free device overall. The final note is key here.


AI Is Coming for Amateur Novelists. That's Fine.

The Atlantic - Technology

With a name that sounds like something a parent would slowly mouth to their infant, NaNoWriMo is an annual "challenge" in which many thousands of seemingly well-adjusted people decide to write a novel in a month. "Do I need something special to write a novel?" the nonprofit that puts on this exquisite torture reasonably asks on its website. National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 with 21 participants, and now nearly half a million take part every November. The event is also the name of the organization that gamifies the exercise, hosting participants on its online platform. To "win" NaNoWriMo, you need to produce a minimum of 50,000 words in a month (about the length of The Great Gatsby)--or 1,667 words a day, a number, NaNoWriMo tells us, that "scientists have determined to be the perfect amount to boost your creativity."


Online publishers face a dilemma: Allow AI scraping from Google or lose search visibility

Engadget

As the US government weighs its options following a landmark "monopolist" ruling against Google last week, online publications increasingly face a bleak future. Bloomberg reports that their choice now boils down to allowing Google to use their published content to produce inline AI-generated search "answers" or losing visibility in the company's search engine. The crux of the problem lies in the Googlebot, the crawler that scours and indexes the live web to produce the results you see when you enter search terms. If publishers block Google from using their content for the AI-produced answers you now see littered at the top of many search results, they also lose the privilege of appearing in other Google search programs like snippets and Discover. Google uses a separate crawler for its Gemini (formerly Bard) chatbot, but its AI Overviews are generated using data from its main crawler.