Lightspeed Ventures-backed audio platform Pocket FM simply introduced that it has partnered with voice cloning firm ElevenLabs to shortly convert textual content content material, resembling script, into audio collection utilizing AI.
Pocket FM, which raised $103 million in Sequence D funding in March, informed Trendster on the time that it was already experimenting with the flexibility to transform textual content content material into audio utilizing ElevenLabs‘ tech. Now, the India-based firm has expanded the partnership to make the conversion instrument accessible to all creators over the following few weeks.
Within the check section, Pocket FM already produced 30,000 hours of audio collection utilizing ElevenLab’s AI tech. With the brand new roll-out, the startup expects to triple its content material library of over 100,000 hours of audio content material this 12 months. Pocket FM additionally stated that throughout the experimental section, the AI-powered instruments helped it lower the price of producing audio by 90%.
Pocket FM’s co-founder and CTO Prateek Dixit informed Trendster over a name that with this partnership, the corporate needs to make it simpler for writers to transform their writings into audio collection.
“We now have over 250,000 writers (together with those on the corporate’s Pocket Novel writing plaform) and this partnership decreases the price of organising and recording audio for them,” he stated.
“Even with a superb arrange of recording instruments and tools, writers can produce roughly half-hour of high-quality audio content material per day. With the AI instruments, this output may be 10 occasions extra,” he added.
Pocket FM has constructed a instrument integrating ElevenLabs tech, by way of which it’s providing 50 voices for writers who wish to convert their content material. ElevenLabs’ co-founder Mati Staniszewski stated that his firm’s instrument understands the context of the writing and infers feelings by way of the voice routinely.
“Working with Pocket FM, we’re deploying our newer fashions that perceive the style of writing and are emotionality higher,” Staniszewski stated.
Dixit famous that based mostly on information from customers’ engagement with this sort of content material, the platform additionally plans to recommend voices that work properly for writers in a selected style.
Pocket FM just isn’t the one audio collection platform experimenting with AI-powered instruments. Google-backed Kuku FM is utilizing GPT-4, Claude, BandLab, and even ElevenLabs to assist its writers with completely different phases of creation, together with refining script, producing thumbnails, including sound results, and changing textual content into audio.
Kuku FM informed Trendster that it is usually experimenting with utilizing visible technology instruments resembling MidJourney and Runway to create advertisements associated to content material.
High quality of content material and affect on artists
The promise of AI-powered instruments is to generate extra content material sooner, however that doesn’t imply the content material is nice. Pocket FM’s reply to aiding discovery and surfacing high quality content material is making its discovery algorithm refined and experimenting with person engagement.
“If a author publishes an audio collection, we floor that content material to a choose variety of customers and observe engagement metrics. If these metrics are constructive, we additional propagate that,” Dixit stated.
Using AI might result in faster outcomes and an even bigger content material library for these platform, however it is going to additionally cut back the roles of voice over artists working with them. India’s Affiliation of Voiceover Artists (AVA) has expressed its issues about AI taking up.
“If AI takes over, we’re completed. As voice artists, we have to get some regulation in place in order that our livelihood is protected,” Amarinder Singh Sodhi, the affiliation’s common secretary, informed Indian publication Scroll.
Sodi additionally informed Scroll about incidents the place voiceover artists have been referred to as into the studio to document samples to coach AI with out acquiring their consent or informing them.
“On an emotional stage, it scares me. By utilizing AI, you might be basically diluting the human expertise of storytelling. You lose out on an emotional connection.” Delhi-based voice-over artist Aditya Mattoo informed Trendster.
He added that giving entry to premium voices to individuals who don’t have developed the style and talent to provide high quality content material will result in the market getting flooded by unhealthy content material.
After we requested concerning the affect of AI-powered voice technology on Pocket FM, the corporate didn’t immediately reply the query. Nevertheless, Dixit famous that engagement with AI-generated content material in its experiments is “nearly as good as human voice-over manufacturing.” Notably, the corporate can be engaged on expertise to include a number of voices in a single audio output.
Each Pocket FM and Kuku FM don’t presently label their content material to point if AI has been used within the creation course of.
