Audio in it of itself is not a bad idea, but having it standardized to AI voices and not allowing creators to offer this feature on their own for their own content is a bad idea. Should writers' content always be used on their dime to provide training data to companies that benefit from these experiments, including AI?

It also doesn't align with the spirit of your mission which is for diverse HUMAN voices spreading stories that help others deepen understanding about the world. The AI voices are not only terrible (they don't sound human) they completely gloss over the tens of thousands of actual human voices that could be reading these if creators so choose. The nuances that come from the original creator reading this or other humans reading it for them is completely lost in AI. Moreover, this perpetuates the devaluation of humans and their work (including over voiceover artists if creators were to even choose other humans to read their work). This is a slippery slope that leads to other ethical questions about where this will eventually lead to, including but not limited to, story-writing by AI, and a general dilution of content least of which is not only just standardization but into more narrow experiences deemed "suitable" by centralized networks like yourself.

The true mission of sharing authentic stories to a wide audience in order to create deeper connections with readers and broaden human understanding should promote human and individual creators' works and options to allow them to present it to readers.

The readers would still benefit in the end. You just won't lose the original authenticity from the creator/writers' side and what makes human stories human.

--TSA