Listenapp: An AI-Based Mobile Application Platform for Auditory Learning

In today’s fast-paced world, students and working-class individuals are increasingly replacing the written word with audio content – primarily podcasts and audiobooks. However, not all content is available in audio format. Print-first media like newspapers and textbooks remain unavailable to the growing group of consumers who prefer the spoken word for its accessibility while commuting, working, or otherwise unable to engage fully with a printed work. Automated text-to-speech solutions exist but read in a flat affect, which fails to communicate the emotions attached to the writing. This paper provides an insight into current solutions and limitations and explains how a mobile application framework is developed to overcome these limitations by using artificial intelligence, including natural language processing to parse meaning and the relatively new field of audio style transfer for speech generation to convert any written work into an audible, read in a voice chosen by the user.