This would be amazing for making audiobooks more expressive and like real storytelling. I kept telling Audible they needed to invest more into premium audio experiences, kind of the way you had the old radio plays that people used to tune into. The War of the Worlds! We are seeing some of that with full casts of actors doing readings more.

At the same time, imagine if every book was like a living thing you could interact with and buying the book partially bought you access to the model that would tell you the story. The only way you would interact with that particular model, is if you bought the book.

It reads the book to you and you could chime in or it would know when to pause if there's an interruption without you needing to manually pause. You say hey wait, why is this character so angry? Then it kind of naturally reacts and continues the story. Maybe you come back to it 3 years later and it remembers you liked a certain part of the book and injects "here comes the good part!" It hears you start snoring and begins lowering its voice and whispering, but remembers you asked it to wake you up loudly if you start snoring, so it bolts out HEYWAKEUP!

For a lot of people books are a very solitary thing, though of course there are social clubs and book readings. Almost makes me think of those magical books you see fantasy wizards having, where the books themselves are sentient. It would be crazy if they released a The Princess Bride book and had the real narrator's voice and you could interrupt him and he could harass you about all your interruptions.

It wasn't that long ago where we were talking about having games and movies blend so the movies become interactive experiences. We're really getting closer to some of these static mediums becoming more like, trained behavioral meshes that have a personality and you can kind of naturally spend time with it. I'm not sure I'd be big on paintings on the wall coming to life and talking to you like in Harry Potter, but there's some promise.

Game worlds are an obvious extension, not just through NPCs, but if anyone remembers that game called Bastion where there was a narrator explaining the events as they went on. You could imagine a model that could watch you play and speak naturally, being funny or narrating. Almost something like Mystery Science Theater 3000 or how Beavis and Butthead would react to music videos.

I don't think those should be pervasive or the new norm, but there probably is an opportunity there and a market for it. Some kind of social-like presence that doesn't get tired, doesn't get bored, always has the same schedule you do, etc.

Hell, that reminds me of Seaman on the Dreamcast, too. SEGA could make a new Seaman and it would actually be awesome. Like a blend between Nintendogs, a fish, and some AI. There could even be charming goofy antics it tries to pull where it knows it's stuck inside a game and tries ridiculous things to manipulate you into letting it out. Some kind of Pinky and the Brain charm.

Anybody on board with this future?