Audible experiments with new AI features for tailored audiobook recommendations | TechCrunch

Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook service, continues to experiment with AI to improve audiobook discovery and offer customized recommendations. Recent tests involve AI-powered tags, which analyze customer feedback to offer tailored suggestions according to individual preferences, and topic pages that recommend tags to help you find closely related subjects.

The experiments are only available to 50% of U.S. users with iOS and Android devices, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. 

Through a new “Tags” carousel in the app, Audible’s AI analyzes customer reviews and briefly explains why other listeners enjoyed a specific audiobook. For instance, at the top of a title, there may be tags like “heartwarming romance” or “relatable storyline.” This allows you to quickly get to the point without having to read numerous reviews. Amazon leverages similar generative AI technology for its e-commerce platform, including a tool that summarizes common product reviews to provide a brief snippet at the top of the page.

In addition to tags, the platform is also experimenting with AI-driven topic pages, which may help you discover relevant audiobooks that you may not have come across otherwise. 

Audible uses AI to power several of its features, including its AI-powered search offering called “Maven,” along with AI-curated audiobook collections and AI-generated review summaries. 

More recently, Audible started to bring on select narrators to train AI on their voices to be used for audiobook recordings. The platform is now following in the footsteps of its competitors, including Apple, which introduced AI-powered audio narration last year for select Apple Books.