Caveat Emptor: More Than Half of My Audiobook Auditions Were AI

This was a post I was not expecting to write. After thirty years in security, I have adopted zero trust as a way of life.

As many of you know, I published a book in July called Cyber Risk Is Business Risk. The concept isn’t new, and most of us have been saying it for our entire careers.

The single biggest request I have had for the book is an Audible version. That is no surprise, since the senior executives the book was written for listen to books; they don’t read them.

So last weekend I decided to open auditions on ACX, Amazon’s closed network for Audible production and a marketplace matching narrators and producers with authors in need of their services.

Within two days of the auditions going live, I received over forty sample recordings of the passages I provided from the book. I ruled out many of them on my initial feel for the voice representing me and my project. I shortlisted six auditions and listened to them very carefully. Five of them were troubling. The tone was perfect, the pace unvaried, and the enunciation just didn’t feel right. So I did what I do: I asked two AI models to examine the metadata on the files. All five were found to have been downloaded from ElevenLabs, the leader in the voice-synthesis space.

As you can imagine, I was not happy, since ACX clearly does not allow the use of AI recordings unless you are part of its own beta program using its proprietary tool.

I decided to go back and listen to all of the recordings, and ended up examining twenty-seven files and their metadata.

Of the files reviewed, eleven had ElevenLabs in the metadata. Three more had strong indicators of AI. Seven had no clear indicators either way, and only six showed markers of actual recording software in the metadata. The math is not encouraging: 52% of the auditions examined were generated by AI, and only 22% could be confirmed to have been recorded by a person.

I am very disappointed that ACX is allowing this, but I hope more people will be diligent and report the fraud when they see it.

AI is an amazing tool, and I use it every day at work and in my personal life as a creator. However, bad actors are looking to cash in anywhere they can. It is not just hackers, but scammers.

Caveat emptor. Buyer beware.