The Project Gutenberg Open Audiobook Collection
When I read Rikki Tikki Tavi to my 8 yr old daughter, we play a game. She asks me to change one of the words in the page and she tries to listen and see if she can figure it out. It is mentally taxing at the end of a long day to do that on the fly without pausing to figure out the word to slip in. And, my daughter is very sharp and catches them.<p>I listened to a few of these. The voice sounds muted at times, as if the reader has a stuffy nose. H.G. Wells was read with a pause in between each period because it &quot;thinks&quot; that each letter boundary is a sentence change, which drove me batty. And, there is zero life in the stories. It might be a good thing to put in front of a kid to put them to sleep, maybe? But, it would not put me to sleep because it is just aggravating to listen to these stories stripped of all life by AI.<p>Like Louis CK said: &quot;Everything is amazing and no one is happy.&quot; I know this is incredible that AI can take in a transcript and produce something that most people would be able to distinguish between a real human. But, we should ask if you would want to hang out with the voice actor at a party.