Look Up Say More Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Creator Playbook Mashable Selects In My Bag AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now All Series Is Audible actually worth it in 2026? I keep cancelling, but it drags me back in. Christina Buff is a Nashville-based freelance writer for who covers shopping with a splash of entertainment. If you're ever wondering what streaming service you need to watch something (and the cheapest way to sign up for it), she's your girl. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers.

Audible just announced something called Interactive Stories, which lets listeners "become part of the story's world." This is done via generative AI, so people can sort of talk to a character. The first of these experiences will accompany the upcoming Audible Original adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The Interactive Story involves Dracula's long-suffering servant Renfield. Audible says Renfield will assign the listener "a role, goal and stakes."

Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more In My Bag Say More Trending Now Mashable Selects Creator Playbook Back to School Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Switch Off Mashable Voices Safety Net All Series Audible is practically free for 4 months with this $0.99 deal Your Goodreads numbers are going to soar. Lois Mackenzie is a freelance reporter at Mashable. Over the years she has written for many publications, covering everything from the local news to the best pair of running shoes. You can find bylines in publications including Fit&Well, Metro, and Coach magazine, usually covering deals on everything from earbuds to TVs, or guides on how to beat your half marathon time. All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This weekend only, Audible is letting you buy two audiobooks per credit. Sign up for a free trial and get your first two audiobooks today. I love reading and I love painting, but it's hard to do both at the same time--and when you're as tight on time as I am, you try to multitask whenever you can. Audible is a cost-effective way to "read" tons of audiobooks, freeing up your eyes and hands for other tasks, like driving, cleaning the house, or gardening.

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).

Products featured in this Mail Best article are independently selected by our shopping writers. If you make a purchase using links on this page, MailOnline may earn an affiliate commission. If you love to read, you'll be pleased to hear that the original Kindle e-reader is on sale for just £49.99 at Amazon - but hurry, this deal ends today. The perfect reading solution for holidays and travelling, rather than weigh down your suitcase with books, the Kindle, which is now on sale with 29 per cent off, comes with 8GB of storage, so it can store thousands of books in one place - like a small library at your fingertips. And you won't even need to buy any titles as it comes with a free three month trial of Kindle Unlimited, giving you free access to millions of fiction and non-fiction titles as well as the latest celebrity autobiographies. While you may prefer the feel of a book, the Kindle has been designed to feel more comfortable to read than paperbacks.

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."