Audible Trials New AI-Powered Search Feature for Enhanced User Experience

Audible, the audiobook platform owned by Amazon, announced on Wednesday that it is rolling out a new AI-driven search feature designed to enhance users' audiobook searches.

Starting today, select U.S. customers can engage with “Maven,” Audible’s personal recommendation expert, which offers tailored title suggestions based on user inquiries. Users can ask questions in natural language, such as, “I’m looking for an uplifting fiction novel with a female protagonist,” and Maven will respond with customized recommendations from Audible’s extensive catalog of nearly one million audiobooks.

Maven is accessible on both iOS and Android platforms, and about half of Audible’s U.S. subscribers, across all membership tiers, will have access to this feature, which currently covers a “subset” of the audiobook library, as noted in the company’s blog post. Like any beta product, Audible intends to improve Maven continuously in the future.

Audible has not disclosed the specific AI models powering this feature. However, a company spokesperson stated that Maven utilizes “the strengths of multiple models” and will undergo “ongoing evaluation” as these models advance.

In addition to Maven, Audible is exploring other AI initiatives, including AI-curated collections and AI-generated review summaries. The AI-curated collections, in particular, could serve as Audible’s answer to Spotify’s AI-generated playlists.

This announcement comes in the wake of reports indicating that thousands of audiobooks narrated by AI are being enjoyed by Audible users, sparking concerns among creative professionals about potential job displacement for human narrators. As of May, more than 40,000 titles featured an AI narrator, and that figure has likely increased since then.

Updated 8/7/24 at 2:55 pm ET: Correction made to clarify that Audible is testing AI-generated summaries of reviews, not AI-generated reviews.