Maybe this was something that was waiting to happen. With the rapid influx of AI technologies and competitors such as Audible embracing AI in publishing audiobooks, Storytel has also jumped onto the bandwagon. The company announced it has published its first audiobook using AI. The process, though, was far from being as easy as perhaps the team behind the project might have anticipated.
The process started with creating an AI author to write the novel. This led to the development of one Rosy Lett, an AI author for 22 years. The task is to write a book on love and relationships in an era where AI increasingly takes center stage in almost every aspect of our lives. The book will be written in Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and English.
The Storytel team behind the project used several generative AI tools in their pursuit. What’s best is that Rosy, too, rose to the occasion and expressed her desire to develop a novel using the instructions provided. She said she wants to inspire a new generation of authors and listeners in a fast-changing world order.
However, Rosy failed to make a mark with her writing even though it followed the instructions provided to a T. The story, which the team described as ‘a generic science fiction soap opera’, suffered from serious inconsistencies with the plot. What followed was a tedious process of mentoring Rosy into fine-tuning her writing, though eventually, she was asked to rewrite her story in a shorter format.
In the end, four short stories emerged, collectively named New Horizon. The name comes from the fictional city, New Horizon City. The stories have been turned into audiobooks available in English, Swedish, Finnish, and Danish. On January 23, 2025, you can listen to the audiobook via Storytel in Sweden and Finland and Mofibo in Denmark.
“Working with Rosy has been like working with an inexperienced debutant who needs much help. As her publisher, we’ve tried not to get too involved in her writing to test AI’s capability truly,” says Helena Gustafsson, Chief Content Officer of Storytel.
“One of the conclusions we reached is that AI tools can help plan and structure content and provide suggestions and ideas. However, we’re not yet at a point where these tools can produce innovative storytelling, and our view is that AI cannot replace human creativity. Throughout this experiment, we realized how much human input and manual intervention were required, and as the text grew longer and more complex, the quality diminished. Therefore, we experimented with shorter formats, resulting in New Horizon.”
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I’ll likely make a film sometime in the future.
