🇳🇬 English, 16 October 2026, AI-generated content
YouTube Plans to Launch Dedicated Audiobooks Feature Next Year
YouTube is negotiating with major book publishers to launch a dedicated audiobooks feature next year, formalizing a massive, currently unregulated segment of the platform’s content.
YouTube already hosts a vast, unofficial library of audiobook videos, but launching an officially licensed audiobook hub would provide a framework to curb AI-generated book piracy.
The proliferation of unauthorized, AI-generated book recordings has exacerbated the enforcement problem, where copyrighted texts are scraped and narrated by robotic text-to-speech voices.
The exact operational model for YouTube’s audiobooks feature is unknown, but it may be bundled into its ad-free Premium subscription, which currently costs $16 per month.