When we think about what makes an audiobook memorable, it's always the most human moments: a catch in the throat when tears are near, or words spoken through a real smile. A Melbourne actor and audiobook narrator, Annabelle Tudor, says it's the instinct we have as storytellers that makes narration such a primal, and precious, skill. "The voice betrays how we're feeling really easily," she says. But as an art form it may be under threat. In May the Amazon-owned audiobook provider Audible announced it would allow authors and publishers to choose from more than 100 voices created by artificial intelligence to narrate audiobooks in English, Spanish, French and Italian, with AI translation of audiobooks expected to be available later in the year – news that was met with criticism and curiosity across the publishing industry.

Synthetic voices have been proliferating for years, and the generative AI boom of the new '20s has sped that process right along. AI voices are everywhere--in podcasts, in political campaigns, and in chatbots where they maybe-not-so-subtly replicate celebrity voices. Soon, they'll be all up in your audiobooks too. Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook company, announced a trial program for generating AI voice clones to read works in its audiobook marketplace. The announcement came via a post in ACX--Audiobook Creation Exchange--Audible's service that lets authors and publishers turn written books into audiobooks.

Should we be concerned about our voice being sourced for AI audiobooks? Kurt "CyberGuy" Knutsson delves into the new technology. Do you love reading yet struggle to find the time for it? Don't worry, you can still enjoy a good book without having to sit down and read. Audiobooks are a convenient way to experience a good story while you're doing other things.

The US Air Force's AFLCMC Armament Directorate has awarded a one-year contract to Liteye Systems and Unmanned Experts to build Web Weasels (WW) autonomous swarming artificially intelligent munitions. WW is part of Unmanned Experts' parent program Air Commons – Swarm which allows commanders to plan, task, and manage multiple swarming assets through a Swarm ATO and Swarm Engine. According to Liteye, squadrons of autonomous collaborative munitions operating at range, and at risk, need the training, Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) to handle the speed-of-datalink environment that occurs in modern combat. Teamwork, communication, shared mental models, and a robust set of tried and tested strategies are needed to survive and dominate. WW aims to overlay Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML)-trained algorithms onto Air Commons – Swarm's capabilities to provide pre-launch munitions with a series of TTPs in a'Playbook' for a given mission set (i.e., SEAD).

When voice actor Heath Miller sits down in his boatshed-turned-home studio in Maine to record a new audiobook narration, he has already read the text through carefully at least once. To deliver his best performance, he takes notes on each character and any hints of how they should sound. Over the past two years, audiobook roles, like narrating popular fantasy series He Who Fights With Monsters, have become Miller's main source of work. But in December he briefly turned online detective after he saw a tweet from UK sci-fi author Jon Richter disclosing that his latest audiobook had no need for the kind of artistry Miller offers: It was narrated by a synthetic voice. Richter's book listing on Amazon's Audible credited that voice as "Nicholas Smith" without disclosing that it wasn't human. To Miller's surprise, he found that "Smith" voiced a total of around half a dozen on the site from multiple publishers--breaching Audible rules that say audiobooks "must be narrated by a human."

The thorny question of how much screen time kids should get hangs over every parent like a rain cloud. Whether the worries are overblown or not, finding alternative activities for kids feels important. There's a world of games and gadgets designed to free your little ones from the tyranny of the touchscreen, but few deliver on that promise. It's a wireless speaker, but what sets it apart is you can buy audiobooks on physical cards. Your child slots these cards into the top of the Yoto Player to start listening, like inserting a cartridge into old-school video game consoles.

This week brought a handful of good tech deals along with the announcement of Amazon Prime Day 2020. While Amazon's annual shopping event will take place on October 13 and 14, there are still some deals worth considering right now (not to mention, a couple of early Prime Day deals for members). Here are the best deals from this week that you can still get today. Prime members can get two 3rd-generation Echo Dots for $20 each when they use the code DOTPRIME2PK at checkout. This brings the price per Echo Dot down to its lowest ever, making this a great deal if you don't absolutely need the redesigned Echo Dot Amazon announced last week.

Newark Venture Partners hosted a full house at its biannual Demo Day, for its 7th NVP Labs class, at the Audible Innovation Cathedral. The event featured presentations from founders of the graduating companies, Botmock, Brahmin Solutions, Galaxy.AI, MindRight Health, omniX, Speak2 Software and SpeechKit. Other featured speakers included Don Katz, Founder and Executive Chairman of Audible, Newark Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin, and Wole Coaxum, Founder and CEO of MoCaFi (an NVP portfolio company) who paid tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. Don Katz, Founder and Executive Chairman of Audible said, "Everyone loves a comeback story and Newark has a great one, including Newark Venture Partners, which is an internationally acknowledged phenomenon that has exceeded all of my founder expectations. When I recently visited NVP labs I was dazzled by one impassioned founder, team, and company after another. Now it is time to double down on NVP's measurable success."

This Thursday, discover the best new products online and save on Amazon. Purchases you make through our links may earn us a commission. And while for the most part, certain retailers have been keeping news of their sales close to the vest, you can find tons of great products on sale on Amazon in advance of the big sales event. From smart robot vacuums to our favorite cheap portable speakers and more, today's best deals on Amazon can help you get a jumpstart on your holiday shopping and save a ton of extra cash while you're at it. You can grab an Anker Soundcore speaker for its lowest price ever right now. You might think you need to spend a small fortune to get good quality Bluetooth speakers, but you don't.

Seven book publishers, including giant players like Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, have filed a lawsuit against Amazon's audiobook company Audible. In a statement received by The Verge, Audible noted that its Captions feature "is not and was never intended to be a book." The lawsuit could have much bigger implications for intellectual property that was created or transformed by machine learning. Over the last month, the U.S. Authors Guild has been fighting more or less the same fight, alleging that its agreements with Audible do not allow the audiobook company the right to create text versions of audio books. READ MORE: Major book publishers sue Amazon's Audible over new speech-to-text feature [The Verge]