Leaps in Text-to-Speech

I wanted to get through this NY Times article on the history behind the Oppenheimer film, but I had some tasks to take care of. So, with misgivings, I asked my iPad to read it to me. And it was as bad as I'd feared. Here's a short paragraph:

With its depth of historical re-creation, its cast of famous figures given tantalizingly brief appearances, its scientific, political and sociological threads running away in multiple directions, a movie like Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” doubles as an encouragement to read more deeply into the history it portrays.

Welcome to 1975. Jesus.

But then I remembered all the work being done on AI reading thesedays, so perhaps some upstart can do a better job. I quickly found NaturalReader, which (alone among the upstarts) lets me use their service without needing to log on (at least for a while). And check it out:



It's not without its quirks. It gets stuck a good long while on the comma after "directions", and, like Apple's voice, the "away" in "running away" gets hollered for some reason. But it's usable!


In Apple's recent earnings call, Tim Cook testily disavowed the notion that they're lagging on AI. Between this and the still-awful Siri, the problem seems clear.