AI will soon read articles from the New York Times

Right now, the New York Times is in a heated legal battle against Microsoft and OpenAI. While that is the case, that’s not to say that the publication is against AI technology in general. According to a new report, the New York Times is planning on using automated voices to narrate its articles.

The legal battle is still going on, as the New York Times claims that scraping its articles constitutes copyright infringement. Right now, we’re still waiting for the results of this case. The results of the case could have major implications for AI companies going forward.

The New York Times will use automated voices for its articles

The New York Times is one of the biggest publication companies in the U.S., and it’s looking to further extend its appeal to more users. We all have to admit that not everyone wants to sit still and read long articles. This is why the company publishes audio recordings of its articles.

So far, the company actually published more than 2,300 audio recordings in 2023, and this includes podcasts. We can’t argue with the convenience of being able to casually listen to an article while getting ready for work or cleaning rather than reading it.

This is why the company is looking to take this a step further. The New York Times will use automated voices to narrate its articles. Starting this week, people who use the news app and audio app will be able to use voice narration to listen to their articles. This is going to be a gradual rollout because about 10% of its users will gain access initially.

Since these are automated voices, they don’t require a human contributor to read and record the audio. We’re not sure what AI platform the New York Times contacted for this automated voice. However, we do know that narrations will be available in about 75% of articles that the publication has published. That will make a ton of articles more accessible to users. It has plans to expand it to all of its articles at some point.

Limitations

If you’re not logged in to the New York Times website/app or if you have not subscribed, you will not have access to unlimited voices. Also, Android users will not be able to use this feature for the time being. It’s currently only available to people using devices from Apple. However, the company plans to bring this functionality to everyone over time.