caitlynlynch
ALTThis is a screengrab from Findaway Voices (the big audiobook distributor everyone who is not Audible exclusive basically uses) Rights Holder Agreement. The Rights Holder is generally the author (sometimes a publisher) but almost never the narrator.
SO.
This is a Big Fucking Yikes from me.
AI-generated audiobooks are a Thing that Apple is now doing - they sound horrid because they don't give the intonation or emotion that a human narrator can - and this agreement is an absolutely naked rights grab for rights that the author doesn't actually possess.
That is, the right to use the narration to train Apple's AI to do better narration, and, incidentally, the right to use the WRITING to train the writing AI's to replace authors too.
Double fucking yikes.
As a narrator, I'm absolutely fuming. You have to choose to opt OUT - or rather, the authors I have worked for have to choose to opt out FOR ME, because apparently I don't even have the rights to my own voice in this situation.
Well, you can bet I posted this in the big narrator group (8,000 members) on Facebook and I'm putting it all over Twitter as well, because Apple can absolutely fuck all the way off.
thebibliosphere
This is horrendous. I am so sorry this is happening, and I am opting out of this immediately.
Author friends, if any of you have audio work with Findaway please also opt out and side with our voice actors on this.
Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because this sets a precedent that will affect ALL of us.
There is no doubt in my mind that this kind of thing will also be used to feed authors works to AI writing tools to mimic our work. They’re coming for our illustrators, our voice actors and they’re absolutely coming for us.
We need to kill this and we need to kill it now.
