I never understand stuff like this. The idea seems to be to run Gutenberg texts through a text to speech system so you can listen while washing dishes. Doesn't anyone read any more?
I like reading and do read a lot and prefer reading to listening cause for me it's much faster and with better comprehension. But after 10-12 hours of screen time, an audiobook saves my eyes and is actually easier while working out or walking on a treadmill.
I'm frequently doing something similar with TTS on iOS and macOS so this would be an all around improvement.
There can be people consuming books through reading, audiobooks, or both.
It does not matter much, except for the preference of the consumer : The thing that actually matters is the content of the book, not the channel through which it is consumed.
And even if you think audiobooks are strictly inferior to reading for everyone, I'm sure you'll still agree that an audiobook is strictly superior to no audiobook, which would be the alternative in the case of people listening to audiobooks while driving/doing dishes/etc...
I never understood arguments like that tbf, haha
Books can be consumed with eyes or ears. Neither is inherently better or worse. Let others have their preferences without having to endure your elitism.
It does seem like this is slowly shifting and good TTS might even make it irrelevant in the future, but for most people consuming via audio only means leaving a lot of material unavailable.
You can listen to stuff at the same time as doing some other activity. (e.g. light exercise, or some straightforward task).
Socrates faulted writing for weakening the necessity and power of memory, and for allowing the pretense of understanding, rather than true understanding.