Just one more example of copyright stifling progress, innovation, and accessibility. The Authors Guild doesn't screw over the public by exploiting our insane copyright laws as often as the MPA or RIAA, but they've had their moments.
Or publisher could license the audio right from the content creators, so they get compensated for the increase in profits that the tech/publisher is making?
If it's audiobook, then yes, it's sort of a performance and you could argue they need different licence. But with tts you basically create the audio with your own means on your device. But you still bought the book, so there is you profit.
If I read a book to my child, would you want me to buy audio license?
I know it’s a rhetorical example, but given how stingy the copyright regime is: yes, yes they would. You maybe could manage a 20% off credit for the child’s listening rights.
Whats the difference between Audiobook and realtime text to audio translation, isn't the outcome/experience the same?
The difference between you reading and the software is one is 'mechanical', whether you want to constrain someone doing that in the rights you grant is debatable.
Copyright enables you (gives the creator the 'freedom' to choose) to make such choices, its what people choose to limit is the problem, as they tend to be very stingy.
> Whats the difference between Audiobook and realtime text to audio translation, isn't the outcome/experience the same?
The "outcome" (text is read aloud) is the same if you read it aloud to yourself. Really the difference is that when a publisher releases an audiobook they hire someone (sometimes multiple someones) often an actor or the original author to sit in a recording studio and recite. They pay for things like studio time, sound engineering, editing, the narrators time, sometimes music or foley, etc. It's very much a different product.
If you have a book and you recite it, or if you pay someone to come into your home and read it to you, or you get a bunch of software and have your computer read it for you, that's your right and at your own expense in terms of time, money, and effort. Some kind of text to speech software is expected on pretty much every device. Including such features in devices or using those features (especially the accessibility features) of your own devices isn't copyright infringement, shouldn't open you up to demands for payments from publishers, and is in no way comparable to a professionally produced audiobook. Maybe one day the tech will advance to where a program can gather the context needed to speak with and convey the correct emotion for each line and will be capable of delivering a solid performance, but right now we're lucky if more than 2/3 of the words are even pronounced correctly and the inflection isn't bizarre enough to make you question what was being said or distract you from the material.
As a thought experiment, how about if some new fancy feature/AI could take your book/text and generate a movie from it. The technology/publishing platform only licensed the right to publish the text/book, but they now have a way that you can watch a movie (in the past they had to get actors, director, sometimes multiple, pay people, studios etc)...
As a follow up it would be cool, TTS did use different voices for Narrator and characters in a book ... if someone patents that your welcome!
I'd guess that even a movie, made by AI using nothing but a book you paid for, would still be okay for personal use. Again, we already have the right to hire an entire theater troop to come to our homes and perform whatever we want. As long as you weren't making your AI movie commercially available you'd probably be alright, that kind of thing might be transformative enough to be covered under fair use, although I'm guessing somebody would still object to you posting it online for free.
Honestly, if AI ever gets good enough at crafting films from literary source material that the AI movies has any chance of competing with a hollywood production the entertainment industry is screwed. I'm positive that by then whatever crazy stuff that AI is putting out will be everywhere and playing with it would be way more fun than a movie theater ticket.
Different voices would be cool, but who is speaking which line can sometimes be ambiguous even for human readers. I'd be happy with just one voice that didn't sound like a robot or like a human voice spliced together from multiple sources.
One of the problems is if TTS becomes comparable to an actor's performance.
It's interesting that we are also now moving in the direction where you can copyright your voice.
yeah, actors are going to have to secure all kinds of "likeness rights" or something to prevent all kinds of media being made with them, but without them. There have already been cases like this:
https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/24/4458368/ellen-page-says-t...
I still expect it'll mean a lot of very amusing outbound voice mail messages.
