Spotify’s taking the humanity out of audiobooks with expanded AI narration

Spotify has been busy diversifying its content beyond music for the last few years, with its subscriber count and revenue up over the last year. So expanding its expansions further makes a whole lot of sense. However, Spotify also appears to be eagerly jumping on the AI bandwagon, which is a little concerning.

Sure, the recently floated AI remixes wouldn’t be the end of the world and may actually prove useful, but Spotify has just announced its opening support for ElevenLabs audiobooks, which offers AI voice narration as a cost-effective means for authors to create audiobooks. While the accessibility and affordability angles are enticing, the loss of humanity for a medium centered around it is pretty questionable, if not short-sighted.

Spotify and ElevenLabs make it easier for authors to create audiobooks

But at what cost?

To be clear, Spotify already offers AI audiobooks through Findaway Voices, its audiobook platform for independent authors, but there is a limit on what kind of AI audiobooks Findaway is willing to publish, and each recording undergoes a review process (per The Verge). So, at the outset, more AI audiobooks on Spotify don’t necessarily sound like a horrible thing, and the goal of offering an affordable way to get books narrated should be a boon to smaller authors who can’t afford celebrities to voice their works. Still, there is a worry Spotify could soon be flooded with AI audiobooks, as all it takes is an investment in the $99 monthly Pro subscription to ElevenLabs to generate enough narration for a full book.

It’ll be plenty affordable for anyone to get their book narrated by AI for Spotify, though one has to wonder how ripping the humanity out of a very human thing such as voice narration is a good thing. Sure, the accessibility aspect can’t be discounted; more people will be able to listen to books than before, books that likely weren’t ever going to see an audiobook version before the task became affordable with AI.

But the truth is AI voice narration isn’t as good as real humans, at least not yet, and your subscription to Spotify will still be charged (with prices that will likely continue to go up) even though you’ll get a lesser product with AI narration compared to real human voicework. There’s also a potential for job loss for those performing narration work, as there is no doubt most companies would fully switch to AI if it worked better. So the path is clear, and it likely has little to do with actually helping humans, but more so is just a great way to save and make money, which is what most things boil down to in the corporate world.

So yes, it’s encouraging to see Spotify expanding its content into more AI audiobooks through its partnership with ElevenLabs, but at the same time, the rush to displace human work with bots is pretty palpable when it still often comes at the expense of quality, something Spotify should stay conscious of if it plans to continue its uptrend through 2025.