Listening to an audiobook narrated by an AI voice can get old after a few hours. There is absolutely still hope for traditional voice narration, especially if different voice actors want to voice different characters in the story.
We'll get there.
As for actual creative tasks, that is another matter altogether. I can only hope that real creativity doesn't die out and that TV series and other things don't get any more homogenous than they already have become. At least there are still enjoyable outliers in this plethora of entertainment output. And in some way, audio books can also be creative if they really add emotions that aren't written down exactly. Similar to how the same sheet music can be adapted by different musicians in slightly different ways or instruments and such. Even if all of that could be synthesized, what it means is that selection of the results would become the creative task. Just like stable diffusion and others output hundreds of images for a prompt but only a few are actually interesting. By definition of this automation, you will always end up with more than you can consume and finding the right result for the right people then becomes the next hurdle.
I still wonder though, whether new entertainment really is necessary until the end of times. There probably are already more books and music in the world to last you a lifetime. And after 100 to 200 years of continuous TV and movie output, you probably could just reshow the ones from a decade ago for the next generation, no need to rehash everything. This assumes that there are no new media though, such as maybe walkable VR movies. But even film from decades ago can be remastered in 4k and I begin to doubt that anything above 4k makes much sense. Even 2k is still perfectly fine to me.
A lot of people do not read books (for various reasons: they are blind, they are driving, they are jogging, they are doing chores, they just don't enjoy reading), leaving millions of pieces of art inaccessible to them.
Getting TTS quality up to near human narration level means absolutely everything will become available to them overnight.
It seems like a big win to me.
It isn’t just the blind who benefit. As you age, eyesight degrades and the mind dulls. At some point, audiobooks are a real boon, especially with PD texts where you can read until you get tired, then listen. Also the growing demographic of live-alone elderly like the background sounds of people talking in their residence, explaining part of the popularity of talk radio. They feel a little less lonely. These audiotexts provide an intellectually varied and overall healthier option. It seems like an Absolute Good to me.