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.

For the first few seconds, the narrator of Kristen Ethridge's new romance audiobook, Shelter from the Storm, sounds like a human being. The voice is light and carefully enunciated, with the slow pacing of any audiobook narrator, as it begins: "There's a storm coming, and her name is Hope." "I know that sounds a little crazy," the breathy voice continues, grinding out the words. "That something so destructive could be labeled with such a peaceful name." It's the aural equivalent of watching the gears of a machine rotate under a surface of what looks like human skin.