This is neither here nor there, but I want to talk about the little audio track that all these major news sites have now of an AI voice reading out their articles.
I don't like them.
Obviously there's an argument to be made in favor of accessibility, and they aren't really doing anything that built-in voice-over accessibility settings weren't already doing, except maybe a little more pleasing to listen to, so I'm not saying that when the cultural revolution comes such things should be banned outright. I just feel like major institutions like the NYT or WAPO could easily afford to pay a small staff of people a very nice wage to read their paper aloud.
My butlerian-jihad-esque reflexive hatred of anything labeled "AI" or "automated" maybe isn't totally appropriate here, I could see a reasonable argument being made for smaller, online-only outfits that still want to have this accessibility feature being allowed it. But if the NYT doesn't want to pay a narrator to read the articles or an audio engineer to alter the recording in case of later corrections or whatever hypothetical argument could be launched against this seems like labor-"saving" bullshit to me.
Yeah, I hate that shit. Some places (e.g. the New Yorker, ProPublica) work with Audm and have professional voiceover done on some of their features, which is actually great and usually the way I read those articles.
This is neither here nor there, but I want to talk about the little audio track that all these major news sites have now of an AI voice reading out their articles.
I don't like them.
Obviously there's an argument to be made in favor of accessibility, and they aren't really doing anything that built-in voice-over accessibility settings weren't already doing, except maybe a little more pleasing to listen to, so I'm not saying that when the cultural revolution comes such things should be banned outright. I just feel like major institutions like the NYT or WAPO could easily afford to pay a small staff of people a very nice wage to read their paper aloud.
My butlerian-jihad-esque reflexive hatred of anything labeled "AI" or "automated" maybe isn't totally appropriate here, I could see a reasonable argument being made for smaller, online-only outfits that still want to have this accessibility feature being allowed it. But if the NYT doesn't want to pay a narrator to read the articles or an audio engineer to alter the recording in case of later corrections or whatever hypothetical argument could be launched against this seems like labor-"saving" bullshit to me.
Yeah, I hate that shit. Some places (e.g. the New Yorker, ProPublica) work with Audm and have professional voiceover done on some of their features, which is actually great and usually the way I read those articles.