Grind out an audiobook in 10-15 hours of studio time, or use AI?

Creators love the idea of AI audiobooks, listeners prefer the real thing - emotional, personal, and not a digital voice maintaining basically the same tone and cadence.
1. My friend's 176 page book would become a 4-5 hour (finished) audiobook.
2. We thought we could use his hundreds of CZcams videos....quick test showed that wasn't happening, even with decent audio.
3. Go to ElevenLabs and ACx, both say the same thing; record yourself reading the book in a super quiet, no background noise place.
Get 1-3 hours of finished material to train the AI.
You can do 30 minutes, but the more the better.
Usually takes double the finished hours to record it for a pro, so 1-3 hours of finished audiobook recordings for training equals 2-6 hours studio time.
The hype is that AI is easy and taking over audio, it's done - truth is we are not even close to approaching the performance and skill of a narrator.