Indeed. What the GP is talking about would be a record player that requires vinyl, but plays only enough of the vinyl to do a Shazam-style identification and then stream the remainder, adding vinyl-sounding noise with a DSP. (Alternatively, the stylus is entirely fake and contains a camera that identifies the album by label, and is moved toward the center using a stepper motor.)

I really hope no-one ever makes such a monstrosity.

What about a camera that just examines a scene to build a prompt then generates an awesome photo of it, instead of using the actual pixels of light?