This is a great post, although I am sorry for the experiences you went through to acquire this perspective.

Thinking more about the specific use-case you have in mind, I find myself wondering how sentiment and inflection might be captured via a synthetic voice. Would it be inferred by context? How would that inference deal with things like sarcasm/irony. I wonder if there could be some input mechanism for controlling the inflection - what would that input interface look like? Could it go off facial expression?

I wonder where the existing tech sits in the uncanny valley for this space...