But this could be revolutionary for media accessibility, and in my mind could easily be worth it for the ability to make new media immediately accessible to folks with vision challenges, deaf and hard of hearing individuals, and a lot of other folks for whom most media is not easily interactive/accessible
As an accessibility add-on / upgrade to standard TTS, sure. Sounds great, even. But I will not accept soulless, robotic, AI-generated voices for something being sold as an audiobook. I just won’t.
What about if we sweeten the deal and allow you to choose the voice actor on the fly? Want Star wars novels read by James Earl Jones, or Tolkien read by Arnold Schwarzenegger? You can have that with AI voices.
Except many books get read by the author or never get read at all so it opens new opportunities for people who wouldn’t ever use audio books or books who never will get audio version now vision impaired people have the option to hear them.
As an accessibility add-on / upgrade to standard TTS, sure. Sounds great, even. But I will not accept soulless, robotic, AI-generated voices for something being sold as an audiobook. I just won’t.
What about if we sweeten the deal and allow you to choose the voice actor on the fly? Want Star wars novels read by James Earl Jones, or Tolkien read by Arnold Schwarzenegger? You can have that with AI voices.
Lol, there is no sweetening the deal. Every one of those is a lost job opportunity for an actual voice actor.
Except many books get read by the author or never get read at all so it opens new opportunities for people who wouldn’t ever use audio books or books who never will get audio version now vision impaired people have the option to hear them.