Apple unveils AI-voiced audiobooks, and "Doctor Google" is becoming a real thing.
In today’s email:
Apple is getting in the audiobook narration game with AI. Hear an example below.
Google’s AI is getting really good at medical diagnoses.
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Apple unveils AI-voiced audiobooks
Artificial intelligence continues to take over markets by netting the same (or similar) results that companies were used to getting, but from a whole team. The most recent example: Apple is getting in the audiobook narration game, using AI models instead of humans. Give it a listen.
The 🥩 of it:
Apple has launched a catalogue of audiobooks narrated by artificial intelligence.
The move is seen as an attempt to enter the lucrative audiobook market, which could be worth over $35 billion by 2030.
Apple delayed the launch of the project in November due to layoffs at Meta and chaos surrounding Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.
Apple approached independent publishers as potential partners, but not all agreed to participate. Publishers involved in the project were required to sign non-disclosure agreements, reflective of Apple’s pursuit of secrecy.
The move could have significant implications for the market if successful, but some are skeptical that AI narration can fully replace human narrators.
There is potential for backlash from professional voice actors, but authors are already increasingly being asked to narrate their own books, anyways.
Human narration can take weeks to produce and can cost thousands of dollars, while AI promises to significantly cut costs.
However, computer-generated voices have struggled to hold listeners' attention for long periods of time and to replicate human intonation and inflection.
Super Artificial Note: This particular issue feels like a non-issue to me. I’ve heard some AI voiceovers, and they’re pretty convincing at normal speeds. But even so, most people I know listen to audiobooks at 1.25x or 1.5x the normal speed, which already makes the narrator feel robotic.
The move is seen as a direct shot at rival Amazon and its audiobook market-leader Audible.
Apple’s move could intensify scrutiny over allegations of its anti-competitive behavior.
I’m not suggesting that this is a bad move for Apple, but doesn’t it feel like a small pond to fish in? In 2021, audiobooks generated $1.5 billion. Let’s say Apple takes control of 50% of that market (unlikely, but it’s simple math). $750,000,000 is a lot of dough, but this is a drop in the bucket compared to Apple’s $378.32 billion in revenue from 2021. What are they really working towards with this project? 🤔
Google’s AI is getting really good at medical diagnoses.
I always joke with my Doctor that I started researching my symptoms with “Doctor Google”. As it turns out, that might be a very real thing soon, and 92.6% of diagnoses from Google’s new medical AI are on-par with human healthcare professional diagnoses of the same patients.
The 🥩 of it:
Google Research and DeepMind (also owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, Inc) have launched MedPaLM, a large language model for the medical industry.
It is designed to generate safe and helpful answers to medical questions, and combines the dataset of frequently asked online medical questions with six other open-question answering datasets.
The dataset being used consists of 3375 frequently asked patient questions, and was collected using previous medical diagnoses and their related symptoms.
The AI model currently performs particularly well compared to another similar program, Flan-PaLM, but still has yet to outperform a human medical expert's judgment.
A group of healthcare professionals determined that 92.6% of the AI’s responses were on par with a human medical expert’s diagnoses.
Only 5.8% of the AI’s answers were deemed to potentially contribute to negative consequences, compared to 6.5% for medical professional answers.
This is not the first time Google has ventured into AI-based healthcare. In the past, it has developed AI to detect lung cancer in CT scans and a diagnostic AI for skin conditions on smartphones. It has also licensed its AI research prototype to a company that creates medical equipment for cancer detection.
Not to make this weird, but how far away do you think we are from having AI built into our toilets to continuously collect stool or urine samples for medical diagnoses?
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