Audible Experiments with New AI Audiobook Features

Audible, the audiobook service owned by Amazon, keeps trying out AI to make it easier to find new audiobooks and make personalized suggestions

Recently, tests have used AI-powered tags that look at customer feedback to make suggestions based on each person’s preferences, and topic pages suggest tags to help you find closely linked subjects.

A company representative told TechCrunch that the tests are only open to half of the people in the U.S. who use iOS or Android smartphones.

Audible’s AI reads customer reviews and quickly explains why other people liked a specific audiobook through a new “Tags” carousel in the app. Sometimes, tags like “heartwarming romance” or “relatable storyline” are at the beginning of a title. This lets you get right to the point without having to read a lot of reviews. Amazon uses similar generative AI technology for its e-commerce platform. For example, a tool at the top of the page summarizes popular product reviews.

The platform is also trying out AI-driven topic pages, which might help you find related audiobooks you wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Not only tags.

Audible uses AI to power features such as “Maven,” its AI-powered search engine, AI-curated audiobook sets, and AI-generated review summaries.

As of late, Audible has been hiring some narrators to teach AI how to use their voices to record audiobooks. The platform is now following the lead of its rivals, such as Apple, which made some Apple Books available with AI-powered audio commentary last year.