In a forceful NY Times op-ed, Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr. warned creative people to be “duly vigilant” about the Kindle 2’s new ability to create automatically generated computerized audio-books.
He concluded that the new text-to-speech function will threaten the billion-dollar audiobook market. Blount also mentioned that this technology is rapidly evolving. IBM has patented a computer-generated voice program that is “almost indistinguishable” from a real voice–including human speech ticks for a more realistic experience.
Here’s more from the op-ed: “A lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation sarcastically warned that ‘parents everywhere should be on the lookout for legal papers haling them into court for reading to their kids.’ For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of ‘Goodnight Moon.’ If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it’s another matter.”