FT Labs — the publisher’s four-person experimental unit — has been converting its text articles into audio to figure out its readers’ appetite for listening to articles. The publisher has been using Amazon Polly to convert the text articles into audio, read by artificial voice named Amy. Written articles take between one and three seconds to convert into audio. Both short news items and long-form, evergreen pieces are converted, like a profile on U.S. boxer, Jake LaMotta or a feature on why Lisbon is so popular with tourists… They are also available in Listen FT, the publisher’s progressive web app.
Sample: “Battle against free digital content takes gloss off magazines”
Read the full piece at Digiday
Amazon Polly is a text-to-speech service that uses advanced deep learning technologies to synthesize speech that sounds like a human voice… Pay-as-you-go $4.00 per 1 million characters for speech requests (when outside the free tier).
More information at Amazon Polly
