Meet Madison and Jackson, the AI narrators or "digital voices" soon to be reading some of the audiobooks on Apple Books. They sound nothing like Siri or Alexa or the voice telling you about the unexpected item in the bagging area of your supermarket checkout. They sound warm, natural, animated. With their advanced levels of realism, Apple's new AI voices present the genuine possibility that the listener will be unaware of their artificiality. Even the phrase used in Apple's catalogues of digitally-narrated audiobooks – "this is an Apple Books audiobook narrated by a digital voice based on a human narrator" – is ambiguous.

When you browse Apple Books for your next audiobook, you might come across a few titles with a note that says they were "Narrated by Apple Books." That's because the tech giant has released a catalogue of titles that make use of its new AI-powered digital narration service. The company said the service uses the advanced speech synthesis technology it developed "to produce high-quality audiobooks from an ebook file." According to The Guardian, Apple approached independent publishers who may be interested in teaming up for the project's launch in recent months. Authors were reportedly told that the company behind the technology would shoulder the costs of turning their books into audiobooks and that they would be earning royalties.