Introducing AI Audio narration

What's inside this article:

• Basic information
• Initial setup
• Frequently asked
• Add narration to a page
• Listen
• Check the status
• Remove narration from a page
• Update a published story with narration
• Check history
• Localize website texts

Basic information

AI Audio narration lets visitors listen to a story instead of reading it. If a story has narration, the Listen button is available on the public page.

When a visitor hits Listen, an AI-generated voice will read the following texts in order:

1. Title
2. Introduction (if an introduction is displayed on the page)
3. Body text (excluding text inside embeds, image captions, and 'See also' links)

The audio plays through our sticky player. This means that if the listener moves to another page, the player will follow them and the audio will continue to play.

Audio narration can bring many benefits, for example:

• Accessibility: make your content more accessible for visitors who are traveling or multitasking.
• Engagement: encourage visitors to spend more time on your site and interact with more pages as they listen.

Initial setup

AI Audio narration is not enabled on all sites by default. We can enable this feature for individual sites on request, subject to language availability.

Follow these steps:

1) Choose your service provider

We offer two third-party service providers, each with different strengths:

• ElevenLabs: Fewer languages, but higher quality audio with more natural-sounding speech.
• Azure AI: Broader language support, though audio quality varies by language.

2) Check language availability

• ElevenLabs: Check if your language is supported on this page:
  • What languages do you support?
• Azure AI: Contact Pangea Customer Care to confirm language support.

3) Preview voice options

• ElevenLabs: Create a free ElevenLabs account to test the available voice options with sample text. To sign in or create a new account, click this link:
  • Sign in to ElevenLabs
• Azure AI: Contact Pangea Customer Care for available voice samples.

NOTE: ElevenLabs free accounts limit audio conversion length. For full article samples in your shortlisted voices, contact Pangea Customer Care.

4) Enable the feature

Contact Pangea Customer Care with:

• Your preferred service provider (ElevenLabs or Azure AI)
• Your language
• The name of the specific voice you want to use (ElevenLabs only)

Frequently asked

Add narration to a page

An editor can manually add Audio narration to a story from Pangea CMS. Narration is not added to all stories by default. To add narration to a story:

1. Open the edit page for the story in Pangea CMS.
2. Fully prepare the content.
3. Tick the box next to Audio narration (available via Editor or in the General settings).

   

4. Select the Published status, then hit Publish / Publish & close to publish the story.

   

As soon as you hit Publish / Publish & close, Pangea AI starts to generate the audio version. When the audio is ready, the Listen button will be automatically added to the public page. This process can take several minutes.

After you publish a new story with narration, we suggest checking the audio quality on the public site. For details, go to the following section in this article:

• Listen

Listen

To listen, hit the Listen button on the public page. If the audio quality does not meet your standards, you can remove the narration.

After publication, the Listen button might not be immediately available on the public page. It can take several minutes for Pangea AI to generate the audio. If the button does not appear after 10 minutes, check the status of the Audio narration request in Pangea CMS.

Check the status

You can check the status of your Audio narration request from the edit page for the story in Pangea CMS. You normally see the following statuses in order:

• Processing: Narration was requested. Pangea AI is preparing the audio version. The 'Listen' button is not yet available on the public page.
• Published: Narration was requested. Pangea AI has prepared the audio version. The 'Listen' button is available on the public page.

NOTE: If Audio narration is not ticked and no status is shown, narration was either not requested or the narration was removed. If you are not sure, check the history.

In rare cases, the Failed status appears. If you see this status, contact Pangea Customer Care for assistance.

Remove narration from a page

If the audio quality does not meet your standards, remove the narration from the public page. Follow these steps:

1. Open the edit page for the story in Pangea CMS.
2. Untick Audio narration.
3. Hit Approve & publish to immediately approve and publish the change.

The 'Listen' button is removed from the public page. Due to caching rules, you might continue to see the button in your browser for up to 5 minutes.

Update a published story with narration

If you update a story after publication, Pangea AI will automatically generate a new audio version. This applies when you update one of the narrated text fields:

• Title
• Introduction (if an introduction is displayed on the page)
• Body text

After you hit the Approve & publish button in Pangea CMS, Pangea AI will start to prepare the new audio version. This process might take several minutes. You can check the status of the Audio narration request in Pangea CMS.

Check history

For a particular story, you can check the history of Audio narration requests. Follow these steps:

1. Find the story on the main Search page in Pangea CMS.
2. Hit the History button.

For Audio narration, the following actions are listed:

• Request Audio narration: Shows which Pangea user originally published the story with the 'Audio narration' box ticked.
• Remove Audio narration: Shows which Pangea user republished the story with the 'Audio narration' box unticked.

Localize website texts

Listen button

When an article has narration, the 'Listen' button appears on the published article. The global text is:

• Listen

Disclaimer text

An info button appears next to the 'Listen' button. When clicked, it displays a short disclaimer. The global disclaimer text is:

• This audio is automated

Sites can add a Learn more link to the disclaimer that opens an Infopage with information about your site's AI policy. (RFE/RL news division management has prepared standard text for this page.)

Audio length format

The narration length appears next to the Listen button. The time format is customizable per site and will be set during initial setup.

Keys for localization

Site admins can update all texts related to the 'Listen' button from the Site localization page in Pangea CMS.

All key names and global values are provided below:

To learn how to access and use the Site localization page, see the following article:

• Use Site localization