By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
On Friday, Frankfurter Buchmesse released a white paper entitled Who is Narrating the Future? AI Adoption, Use and Outlook in Audio Production, researched and written by Dosdoce.com. The global study examines how the use of artificial intelligence is reshaping the production of audiobooks, audio dramas, and podcasts. This study builds on research and previous reports that Dosdoce.com and the Frankfurter Buchmesse have released over the last three years to see how technology is being used in the growing audiobook sector of the industry.
“We at the Frankfurt Book Fair are very pleased, in an era when ‘buzzwords’ are thrown around all too often, to be able to publish such a solid, well-researched report that truly helps us better assess the current situation in the rapidly evolving audio market,” said Martina Barth, Key Account Manager, Audio, Frankfurter Buchmesse.
Given the considerable coverage and discussion of AI in the industry over the last year, it may not be surprising that most respondents went from being cautious or even refusing to use AI just a year or two ago to exploring and experimenting with the technology in one or more phases of audiobook production. Of those who responded, 17% have integrated AI across more than six phases of their production workflow. This provides evidence that adoption is shifting from experimentation to operational infrastructure. However, what the report notes is that, while AI adoption in the audio publishing industry is growing, it is not being adopted at the rate of similar creative industries such as music, TV/film, and gaming.
“In less than a year, we’ve watched the industry’s posture toward AI shift from ‘cautiously progressive’ to ‘actively testing and redefining production processes.’ More than two-thirds of the professionals we surveyed are now evaluating AI tools and building real workflows around them — not just talking about it at conferences,” stated Javier Celaya, founder of Dosdoce.com. “But adoption isn’t uniform: 85% use AI somewhere in their audio production chain, yet only 17% have embedded it across more than six phases. The headline number and the operational reality are two different stories.”
For the white paper, Dosdoce.com spoke to 85 world industry experts – 50% from audio production studios, 36% from publishers, and 14% were streaming platforms or distributors across Europe, Latin America, North America, Africa and the Middle East – to get a clear picture of the usage trends, where the industry is focusing adoption, and the benefits and challenges of the technology.
Where publishers seem to be using the technology most is to optimize workflows, scale production for backlist titles, to diversify languages and accents, and to help build infrastructure and make audiobook production less costly in developing markets. What respondents have said is that the technology is being used with humans, not to replace them – both in the production process and in narration.
“The emergence of African AI voice companies is an encouraging development, and we hope to see continued progress in the quality, diversity, and commercial readiness of African voices for
long-form narration,” said Ama Dadson, Founder & CEO, AkooBooks Audio (Ghana) and Frankfurt Buchmesse Audio Ambassador who Publishing Perspectives recently interviewed about the growing African audiobook market.
Though technology providers may promise 85-95% cost savings, what respondents reported was considerably lower than that (20% and 50% in the second and third year of AI adoption). The white paper notes that difference may be due to using AI in one or two stages of the production process not in the complete production workflow. Though cost savings and speed of production process are two important reasons to use AI in audiobook production, 86% of respondents cited voice quality and rights transparency and 79% cite data privacy when choosing vendors with which to work showing the caution and thoughtfulness in using this technology.
Of the 15% of respondents who have opted to focus entirely on human-only production model, they have noted a number of reasons for not using the technology, such as human-first stance, personal lack of interest, tech limitations and barriers to production quality, client mandate not to use AI, language availability, or internal processes not ready.
As noted in the infographic below, 50% of the barriers to scaling using AI come from limitations set by literary agents, publishers, and authors but further reasoning why these groups have presented these limitations, such as the human quality of AI narration is not as advanced, concern that audiences will not respond to AI narration, a way to protect human narrators, or a natural distrust of the technology was not given.
Whether there is hesitation around using AI or not, 86% of respondents said that they expect disruptive or moderate industry growth attributable to AI over the next three years, seeing continued growth expanding audiobook catalogues into backlist, academic, niche and non-English-language titles that were previously economically unviable.
“This has been one of the hardest reports we’ve put together in the last three years, precisely because AI remains such a sensitive issue in the publishing sector — many respondents were willing to share data, lessons learned, and insights with us, but only on the condition that it be anonymized and aggregated,” said Celaya. “The real question the industry now faces isn’t whether AI and human narration will coexist — they clearly will — but whether growth comes with transparency. Trust, once spent, is far more expensive to rebuild than any single title was to produce with AI tools.”
Below is an infographic with some of the key data from the white paper. To download the full report, please click here.
