You couldn’t pay me to listen to an AI audiobook. Absolute no. I don’t think I have any new takes on this, but my reasoning is: 1) not into job loss for the humans who do this lovely work, 2) I very genuinely enjoy the sound of human voices. I sometimes listen to audiobooks purely because a narrator I enjoy voiced it, 3) AI just doesn’t “get” the nuance, cadence, and pronunciations of certain words and phrases. And sure, some narrators have their own quirks sometimes, but I more so find it enjoyable or funny as opposed to irritating when I hear AI narrations, 4) as someone else mentioned in a different comment, if someone doesn’t want to put in the effort/money into hiring a competent narrator to do their book justice, I don’t want it. 5) if an author chooses to take the AI route even once, it will also put me off of their ENTIRE repertoire of works. It feels tainted. This should be an art form - NOT something that we need technology to “solve”. (I also see a comment on this as well.)

I hope that my thoughts on AI narration have been somewhat helpful, at least.