Audible Introduces Three Interactive New Features

Audible is adding three new features–Character Guide, Interactive Story, and Visual Explorer–to its audiobook platform to give listeners new ways to interact with content.

“Audible is today introducing a new suite of features designed to deepen customers’ connections to their favorite stories,” the Audible announcement notes. “From keeping track of a complex cast of characters, to seeing the larger world behind the story, to becoming part of the story themselves, listeners will enjoy rich new ways to engage with the content they love. The three new features, Character Guide, Interactive Story, and Visual Explorer, are built in close collaboration with creators, using AI to enhance the listening experience.”

Here’s what’s new.

Character Guide. This feature helps listeners track all the characters in a book by showing who is speaking in real time on the player page, providing spoiler-free character cards that also spotlight the performers with narrator headshots and bios, and, soon, by letting listeners ask questions about the production as the story unfolds. The first titles to support this, the Audible Originals Bram Stoker’s Dracula and George Orwell’s 1984, are available now, and it will be included with the Audible Original Exoplanet from writer Benjamin Percy and executive producer Andy Weir coming on November 5.

Interactive Story. This is a bonus experience beyond the original narrative that features real-time conversations with a character that Audible says is “brought to life through a unique combination of generative AI, conversational design, and rich sound production.” It’s also debuting in the Audible Original Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which will let listeners interact with Renfield, Dracula’s servant.

Visual Explorer. This feature is coming soon and will display relevant imagery and visual context at key moments during listening. This can include a map of where a story is unfolding or an image tied to a pivotal moment, and Audible cites The Cultural Tutor’s Grand Tour: The Story of Europe in Six Cities* as an example in which listeners can explore additional imagery and bonus information about key landmarks, figures and places featured in six European cities.

Each of these features is rolling out in a limited beta release in the U.S. and UK, and Audible says it will evolve them based on customer and creator feedback.