Spoiler: not the way Dolby originally thought.
Audiobook production today is expensive, fragmented, and intimidating for independent authors without access to studios or production teams.
Dolby came to us with a clear direction: build an AI voice generation tool to fix this.
We started there. Then we talked to actual narrators. "Why is AI chasing after our artistic careers?"
That one line changed everything. Authors didn't want AI to replace their voice, they wanted the production process to be less painful. Two completely different problems.
We went back to Dolby and reframed the entire project. Not because the technology couldn't do it, but because it shouldn't.
What we built instead: an end-to-end AI-assisted narration workflow that keeps the author's voice at the center and delivers ~20% faster production workflows.
What is the specific problem we are trying to solve? What is our approach towards it?
What are the existing solutions available & why aren’t they working?