W H E N V O I C E A C T O R  

Heath
Miller sits down in his boatshed-turned-
home studio in Maine to record a new audiobook narration, he has
already read the text through carefully at least once. To deliver his
best performance, he takes notes on each character and any hints of
how they should sound. Over the past two years, audiobook roles,
like narrating popular fantasy series He Who Fights With Monsters,
have become Miller’s main source of work. But in December he
briefly turned online detective after he saw a tweet from UK sci-fi
author Jon Richter disclosing that his latest audiobook had no need
for the kind of artistry Miller offers: It was narrated by a synthetic
voice.

Richter’s book listing on Amazon’s Audible credited that voice as

“Nicholas Smith” without disclosing that it wasn’t human. To Miller’s
surprise, he found that “Smith” voiced a total of around half a dozen
on the site from multiple publishers—breaching Audible rules that
say audiobooks “must be narrated by a human.” Although “Smith”
sounded more expressive than a typical synthetic voice, to Miller’s
ear it was plainly artificial and offered a worse experience than a
human narrator. It made giveaway mistakes, like pronouncing Covid
as “kah-viid” when referring to the pandemic.

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Miller tracked down “Smith”—the voice matched a sample posted to

SoundCloud by Speechki, a San Francisco startup that offers more
than 300 synthetic voices for audiobook publishing across 77 dialects
and languages. He and other narrators and audio fans
who discussed the artificial audiobooks online reported the titles to
Audible, which eventually removed them. Although it wasn’t a large
number, discovering that synthetic voices were good enough for
some publishers to put them to work prompted Miller to wonder
about the future of his art and income. “It’s a little terrifying because
it’s my livelihood and that of many people I respect,” he says.

Richter says he chose an artificial voice because the concept and its
“uncanny valley” sound suited his book, which has a piece of
intelligence software as one of its main characters, and that he was
unaware of Audible’s policies. “My intention was never to upset or
offend anyone,” he says. Speechki says it recommends publishers
identify that narrations are synthetic and that it informs them of
Audible’s policies. Will Farrell-Green, a senior director at Audible,
said in an emailed statement that the company uses automated and
manual processes to enforce its rules but that “due to the volume of
content on our service, titles that are not compliant do slip through
from time to time.” Audible’s “human’s only” policy dates back to at
least 2014, when synthetic voices were much less convincing, and
the company has said the rule helps provide listeners the
performances they expect.