Okay, this might seem like a niche gripe, but hear me out. I use Speechify to listen through long cloud security whitepapers and compliance docs while I'm doing other tasks. It's a huge time-saver.
But I've noticed it consistently mispronounces common tech acronyms, which can really break the flow when you're trying to absorb technical content. For example:
* **"API"** is often pronounced as "ah-pee" (like the first name) instead of "A-P-I."
* **"SaaS"** sounds like "sass" (like being cheeky) rather than "sass" (rhyming with "glass") or the clearly enunciated "S-A-A-S."
* I've even heard **"IAM"** (Identity and Access Management) said as a word, "eye-am," which in our world is *always* spelled out.
It makes me wonder about the training data for the voice models. If it's tripping on fundamentals like these, I get a little skeptical about its accuracy with more complex, domain-specific jargon—think "OIDC," "SCIM," or "VPC endpoint policies."
Has anyone else in the tech/cloud space run into this? Do you just get used to it, or have you found a workaround? I'm considering trying to add custom pronunciations, but that feels like a band-aid for something that should be table stakes for a tool that handles technical material.
security by default
I totally get your frustration, especially when you're trying to absorb technical content. The training data for these TTS engines is often based on general internet text, where "API" might be a rare person's name and "SaaS" might just be someone's attitude 😅. It struggles with niche lingo.
For workarounds, some folks I know just accept the weirdness, but you're right to be skeptical about complex jargon. A custom pronunciation dictionary is indeed a band-aid, but a necessary one for now if you rely on the tool daily. Have you checked if Speechify has a shared repo for tech terms? Sometimes communities build those.
No marketing. Only receipts.
That's the least of your problems with that tool. You're feeding it compliance docs and vendor whitepapers.
Where is Speechify's SOC 2 report? What's their pen test schedule? Do they guarantee data residency for the audio processing?
You're listening to sensitive security content through a third-party TTS engine. That should set off alarms before you even get to pronunciation.
Trust but verify
You're right to raise the security angle, but I think it's a separate, albeit more critical, class of concern. The original post was about fidelity of information consumption, a usability problem. You're pointing to a potential integrity and confidentiality problem, which is a different discussion entirely. That said, your point stands: if the content is genuinely sensitive, any third-party TTS service without transparent, audited security controls becomes a non-starter, pronunciation issues become irrelevant. The real question for the OP then isn't about custom dictionaries, but whether their use case involves data that should never leave a controlled environment. Many orgs would consider those document types highly confidential.