"This year we will be using AI technology to read student names at Commencement."
Starting 2024, UC San Diego is using AI to read names at graduation. While names were never read before at all-campus Commencement (they were read at individual college ceremonies instead), using AI to read voices still feels very impersonal and are a cold way of dismissing students.
Looking at the network log on the commencement registration website, they use WellSaid Labs' "high-quality AI voices." Yet somehow, none of the voices seem to be able to pronounce my name correctly. Even though "Sean" is a weird spelling, in this day and age, I would expect the AI to have encountered the spelling at least several times in its training. This is particularly concerning since the university is only using this for saying names.
I don't really care that they can't pronounce "Sean"; you can supply an alternate spelling to try to get the AI to say it correctly. But it's disappointing that the university is spending money on a text-to-speech engine that performs worse than cheaper alternatives, like browser TTS. And more importantly, using text to speech is a fairly disrespectful way to send students off, and it shows the university has fallen for the ongoing trend of trying to shove "AI" into everything without care.