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Project Gutenberg puts 5,000 audiobooks online for free using synthetic speech | TechCrunch

Sep 19, 2023 - news.bensbites.co
Project Gutenberg, in collaboration with MIT and Microsoft, has converted thousands of its titles into audiobooks using synthetic speech. The process involved creating a system to identify similarly formatted book files in the archive and determining which were best suited for automated reading. The team also developed machine learning and synthetic speech tools to make the generated audiobook engaging and life-like.

The first batch of around 5,000 books is now available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and the Internet Archive. The selection is somewhat idiosyncratic due to the constraints of the automated parser, but the team is working to generalize the system for future releases. The code used for this project is being documented on GitHub.

Key takeaways:

  • Project Gutenberg has converted thousands of its titles into audiobooks using synthetic speech, making them available for download or streaming on various platforms.
  • The project was made possible through a collaboration with MIT and Microsoft, using AI-generated speech to bring the books to life.
  • The team designed a system to work through the archive, identifying book files that were similarly formatted and best suited for automatic reading.
  • The first batch of around 5,000 books is available for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and the Internet Archive, with plans to expand the selection in the future.
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