Somebody on r/PromptEngineering just shared a small build that I can’t stop thinking about. u/Right_Ambition_1035 turned the chat sites you already use into free text-to-speech tools.
What’s new
ChatGPT, Qwen, Gemini, Claude and most of the other big chat sites now have a Read Aloud button on their replies. The voices on those buttons are good, and they cost you nothing extra. A few years ago, voices like these were locked behind paid TTS subscriptions with per-character pricing. Now they ship as a side feature on a chat interface, sitting right under every answer.
The author packaged this into a set of browser extensions, collected at ai-readers.com. They say it has been used by over 30k people. That number comes from the author, and I haven’t checked it. Still, the idea is simple enough that I can see why people would pick it up. If you’ve ever needed narration for a short video, a voiceover draft, or just wanted to hear your own writing, you know how fast the costs and signups pile up with dedicated tools.
The twist
Read Aloud is meant to read the AI’s answer. The trick is to make the AI’s answer be your text. You hand the chat your script, it repeats it back word for word, and the built-in voice reads it out loud.
So you never opened a TTS tool. You borrowed the voice from a chat site you were already paying for, or using free. Think about what that means in practice. There’s no new account, no character quota to watch, and no export screen to figure out. The whole thing lives in a tab you probably already have open.
Mini-workflow (do it by hand first)
📝 Open any chat site that has Read Aloud. Pick the one whose voice you like best, or just start with whatever you use daily.
📋 Paste your text with a short instruction like: “Repeat the following text exactly, with no changes, no intro and no commentary.” Put the instruction first, then your text below it, so the model doesn’t confuse the two.
🔊 Hit the Read Aloud button on the reply. If the site lets you choose a voice or a speed, try a couple of settings on the first paragraph before you commit to the whole thing.
🎧 Listen, or capture the audio if you need a file. For a quick proofread, just listening is enough. Your ears catch clunky sentences and missing commas that your eyes skip right over.
The extensions on the site appear to automate this loop, so you skip the copy-paste dance. I haven’t installed them myself, so test one before you rely on it.
Pro tips
- Check the output before you listen. Models sometimes “helpfully” fix typos or add a sentence, and the voice will read that too. The strict repeat instruction cuts this down a lot. Skim the reply against your original, especially numbers, names and URLs, since those are the spots where a model likes to “correct” things.
- Long text can get trimmed or split. Feed it in chunks of a few paragraphs and compare the first and last lines of each reply.
- Compare a couple of platforms. Each one has its own voice, and the one that suits your text may not be the one you use daily. A calm voice might fit a tutorial, while a brighter one works better for a promo clip. Run the same short paragraph through two or three sites and pick a winner.
- Spell out anything tricky. Acronyms, brand names and unusual words can get mangled. If a name keeps coming out wrong, write it phonetically in your text and the voice will usually get it right.
- Treat any extension like software that can see your pages. Read what permissions it asks for, and don’t paste anything private into it.
- This rides on each platform’s own feature, so it can break whenever they change their UI. It’s a handy hack, not a stable pipeline. If something matters, keep a paid TTS tool as your backup.
Why I like it
It’s a small idea with a lot of leverage. Nobody built a new model here. They noticed an existing feature could do a second job. That’s a good habit for anyone working with AI tools: look at what’s already sitting in the interface and ask what else it could do. Half the time the best tool is one you already have open, just used in a way the designers didn’t plan for.
Your turn 🚀
Try the manual version on your next long email or script and tell me how the voice sounds. If you’ve found other features hiding a second use inside the tools you already have open, I’d like to hear about them. ⚓
I made ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc. into FREE text-to-speech sites.
by u/Right_Ambition_1035 in PromptEngineering