My voice is being replaced by software I trained

Dear Delyara, I have narrated audiobooks for eighteen years. Last year, a technology company paid me to record hundreds of hours of speech for what they called accessibility research. I signed a contract I barely understood because the fee covered my mother’s care. Now my publisher is testing an artificial voice built partly from my recordings. It can read a novel in minutes, correct mistakes instantly, and work without breaks, illness, or royalties. Yesterday, I heard it narrate a paragraph from a book I had hoped to perform. The voice sounded like me after a good night’s sleep: warm, patient, and slightly younger. My agent says the industry is changing and advises me to diversify. The company says the model does not legally imitate any one person. Still, I hear the breath pattern I spent years learning to control and the softness I use at the end of sad sentences. I trained the thing that may erase me because I needed money to care for someone I love. Every narrator understands that a voice disappears the moment the recording ends. I did not expect mine to continue without me and compete for the next chapter.