this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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I very much understand the misgivings about this, and certain parts make me uncomfortable with it, too. 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. For many people in this situation, you wait months after a traditional version of something is published before an accessible version is released, if it ever is. Often, it's just not seen as worth a publisher's time to make their content accessible to an audience they don't see as significantly profitable.
Like the printing press took jobs from scribes, but had far more significant impacts democratizing information and education, so might AI in the long run.
What if Amazon sold TTS voice packages that can read any novel in your catalogue? "Hello yes I would like the James Earl Jones voice package and every Star Wars book ever written please." But the existing audiobook storefront still had only audiobooks read by real people in it, protecting their jobs.