Generating audio for an audio book: If an author could speak for 20 minutes and then generate audio for an entire book from the book's text and the model, I think that would be very useful.
But I'm not sure. Part of why I'd prefer the original author to read a book is that they vocally emphasize certain parts of the book, and I don't think these models could do that at this point.
Right, but having AI read the book in the author's voice is definitely not the author reading the work.
As you mention, the reason that people like to hear the author read it is because it's the author reading it, theoretically emphasizing and acting things out according to what was intended. It's not just to hear the author's voice.
So I don't see what the value-add is.