Amazon bought a thing that does a thing it helps Amazon do, so presumably the first thing will help out with Amazon’s thing more, we think. Ordinarily, this isn’t the kind of story we’d post to Gizmodo, but in light of the fact that there’s basically literally nothing happening in tech today, here you go. Let’s talk about it.
The thing that Amazon bought is called IVONA Software. IVONA Software is ten years old which means it’s half way to its 20s and that’s the decade when you find out who you really are. IVONA Software does lots of text-to-speech stuff, which is good because Amazon has books and those books have lots of text Amazon would like to turn into speech. (IVONA’s actually already used in a bunch of those features like Immersive Reading, but whatever.) And for those of you think that text-to-speech is just for lazy people who don’t read good, it’s not (but it is a little)! It’s also so Amazon can get money from blind people too and also help them “read books”.
In conclusion, please god let something else happen today. [Amazon]
