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Melania Trump announced the release of her memoir’s audiobook, which features an AI-generated version of her voice rather than her own narration. The move highlights a growing trend in the publishing world in which AI is reshaping how stories are told and who gets to tell them.
“I am honored to bring you Melania – The AI Audiobook – narrated entirely using artificial intelligence in my own voice,” she wrote in a post on X. “Let the future of publishing begin.”
For her memoir “Melania,” Trump collaborated with ElevenLabs, an AI audio research and technology startup, to recreate her voice and leverage AI to read and narrate it. ElevenLabs features other celebrity voice AI narrators including the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia.
Impact of AI-enabled content creation on jobs
AI companies are racing to dominate content creation, a field once reserved for skilled human creators. For instance, AI is already being used to do or assist with numerous tasks that were previously only assigned to people, including write books and news, program applications, narrate audiobooks, and create ads.
Another example is using AI to create video and audio, especially short videos that users can post on social media. In the same week as Melania’s announcement, Google released Veo 3, an AI video generator that can create and incorporate audio and dialogue between characters. Veo 3 is Google’s answer to OpenAI’s Sora, a video creation AI model.
It’s possible that Trump’s audiobook might accelerate the use of AI in content creation, potentially endangering thousands of media jobs in particular worldwide.
Alex Connock, a fellow of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, said in an interview with CNN, “It’s too reductive to say, yes, that’s an inevitable cut in the number of jobs.”
He added: “But it’s also fanciful to say there’s going to be no change to how employment works.”
Read eWeek’s coverage of Simon & Schuster’s move into AI translations and an AI startup that is trying to disrupt self-publishing.