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Unauthorized AI-generated audiobooks are proliferating across YouTube and Spotify.

Why it matters: Unlike the debate over training data, AI audiobooks directly compete with what publishers and authors are trying to sell.

By the numbers: Vermillio identified 18,000 unauthorized AI-generated versions of 1,300 original audiobook titles, or nearly 14 unauthorized versions for every original title, the company shared with Axios.

Those unauthorized versions generated 382 million streams, averaging more than 21,000 streams per piece of content, according to data collected between July 1 and Sept. 1.

Vermillio estimates those streams represented $1.3 billion in value across its sample and extrapolates that to a potential $6.7 billion across an estimated 90,000 audiobooks produced in a year.

Vermillio says its technology scans all major platforms where audiobooks are available online.

Zoom in: AI has "supersized book piracy," Rachel Geman, an attorney at Lieff Cabraser who represented authors in copyright litigation against Anthropic, tells Axios.

The big challenge is enforcement. Rightsholders have to find unauthorized versions scattered across platforms, which Geman likens to a "Where's Waldo" game. 

Audiobooks can be harder to detect than pirated music because copies can be altered, such as by changing words, omitting passages or using an AI narrator, to evade systems designed to identify the original recording.

State of play: Platforms are adapting their copyright systems to AI-generated audio.

YouTube says rightsholders must notify the platform when they believe copyrighted material has been uploaded without permission. The company says it's piloting tech to improve detection of non-music audio.

Spotify works with publishers and industry groups, including the Audio Publishers Association, to identify and remove infringing audiobooks and is investing in systems to identify repeat uploaders.

The APA has hired an outside firm that identified a network of roughly 17 sites distributing audiobook downloads. The group plans to target piracy at those sources, executive director Jim Dinegar tells Axios.

Yes, but: AI could expand the legitimate audiobook market. Fewer than 2 million audiobooks are available globally compared with an estimated 100 million to 150 million print and ebooks, Audible CEO Bob Carrigan said earlier this year.

Audible offers publishers more than 160 AI voices and dialects, up from more than 100 last year, as well as AI translation from English into Spanish, French, Italian and German. The company said it's continuing to invest in professional narration, too.

Tens of thousands of authors have used Audible and Amazon's AI production tools to create hundreds of thousands of audiobooks, Audible tells Axios. Listeners have spent more than 70 million hours with AI-produced titles, which have an average customer rating above four stars.

Zoom out: Books have become one of the key battlegrounds in the fight over how AI companies obtain and use copyrighted material.

Anthropic agreed to settle with authors after a federal judge ruled that training its AI on lawfully acquired books could be fair use but that downloading millions of pirated books infringed copyright. The settlement covered about 500,000 works and was valued at $1.5 billion.

The controversy has extended to how AI companies obtain physical books. More than a dozen civil society groups last month urged the FTC to investigate AI companies for buying, scanning and destroying books for training, arguing the practice could harm competition.

What to watch: Another major test is underway with the lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft from authors including Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin. 

The case was centralized in the same multidistrict litigation as the New York Times' and other publishers' suits and is moving through summary judgment.

Pirated AI audiobooks threaten publishers

18,000 unauthorized AI audiobooks generated 382 million streams, per Vermillio.

Illustration of a book with a wave of binary code passing through it.

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images

AI & machine learning

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Pirated AI audiobooks threaten publishers

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