This is an app by ElevenLabs, where you can import a web article or ebook, and listen to it with some of its text-to-speech voices.
I’ve tried it out for a few hours so far and so far it’s pretty OK. However, I did notice a couple of problems that could be ironed out:
- When using a PDF, ElevenReader will read out all of the text in the document, including page numbers and repeated headings. I couldn’t find a way to disable this, so I just resorted to using an ePub version of my book instead.
- The Lily voice will sometimes drop the first one or two syllables of a sentence, especially after it has paused for a few seconds. I tested a few other voices, and they didn’t seem to have this problem.
Anyway it’s nice that an app like this is being offered for free and without ads. Apparently a paid tier will be introduced later, but I hope this isn’t at the expense of any of the free features. (It would be even better for an open source alternative of comparable quality to be developed in case, but I don’t know any.)
I decided to try this, expecting it would offer some light amusement at its own expense. But the voices are reading with intonation and somewhat convincing expressiveness. It is a little disquieting.
If such a thing were open source or at least locally run and fully under my own control, I should like to keep it.
You might like to try piper: https://github.com/rhasspy/piper
It’s not quite as good at getting the intonation and expressiveness, but it’s a more natural sounding text to speech than a regular screen-reader robot-voice.
Would love to spend a day learning enough code to make it do things, but I’m pretty much a committed pebkac at this point
I had to look up pebkac / PEBKAC
problem exists between keyboard and chair
I also like the acronym PICNIC - problem in chair not in computer
