I have several tapes (yes actual cassette tapes) of my grandfather reading a novel.

Unfortunately a few of the tapes have degraded to the point that I cannot play them back.

I would love to recreate his voice, to “rerecord” the missing bits.

The recordings are in Danish.

Is this possible?

If it is, how can I go about it?

  • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
    17·
    3 months ago

    Maybe the term you are searching for is “AI voice cloning”. The engine of https://elevenlabs.io/voice-cloning claims to be able to understand and reproduce even Danish.

    Edit: They seem to require some voice verification to make sure the voice is yours. Which is odd in your case.

    https://speechify.com/da should allow to recreate the voice of “your beloved one”, at least they mention it on their German page.

    • boojumliussnark@lemmy.worldOP
      8·
      3 months ago

      I did sign up for ElevenLabs, unfortunately they cannot allow me to clone a dead persons voice, as per their FAQ:

      You may only clone your own voice or a voice you have the rights to clone. For added security, when creating a Professional Voice Clone we require users to complete a Voice Captcha mechanism by reading a text prompt within a specific time to confirm your voice matches the training samples you upload for training. If there’s a match, your request is sent for fine-tuning. If not, you’ll have to reach out via our help center to have your voice verified manually.

      Now I’m sure it wouldn’t be an issue to get the legal rights, but when I spoke to their support, they did not have any way to verify beyond the captcha.

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
        4·
        3 months ago

        If you have the equipment (mainly an Nvidia GPU that has the ability) doing voice cloning locally is the way to go if you keep running into legal issues. Plus being on your computer you may be able to tweak and try different methods to get the best results for your needs. A year ago this would have been a maybe, but there’s a lot out there to look at and try. See what others have done first in videos and such and follow their lead.

          • Successful_Try543@feddit.org
            2·
            3 months ago

            ####Bleibende Momente
            Klonen Sie die Stimme einer geliebten Person und lassen Sie sie Ihren Kindern Ihre Lieblingserinnerungen oder -geschichten vorlesen.

            ####Gibt es eine Software, mit der man die Stimme von jemandem nachahmen kann? Speechify AI Voice Cloning kann jede Stimme in Sekunden klonen. Alles, was die KI braucht, ist, dass sie sich die Stimme für etwa 30 Sekunden anhört. Sobald sie die Stimme einer Person gesampelt hat, kann sie mit der gesampelten Stimme lange Dokumente lesen, Podcasts erstellen und vieles mehr. Haben Sie einen geliebten Menschen, dessen Stimme Sie gerne mal hören würden - wandeln Sie einfach jeden Text in seine Stimme um. Erstellen Sie Audio-Podcasts oder Voice-Overs. Jetzt können Sie stundenlang mit Ihrer eigenen Stimme sprechen - ohne ein einziges Wort zu sprechen.

            https://speechify.com/de/voice-cloning/

            Alternatively, https://www.resemble.ai/voice-cloning/ could do it, as they state:

            ####Can I clone anybody’s voice? While Resemble AI empowers users to create AI replicas of various voices, it’s essential to adhere to ethical guidelines and obtain proper consent before cloning someone’s voice. Respect for privacy and intellectual property rights is paramount in utilizing our technology. Please read our Ethics page for more details.

            However, Danish is only in their ‘Pro’ tier list, so you should perhaps try it with some English text first.

            • boojumliussnark@lemmy.worldOP
              21·
              2 months ago

              Thank you again for diving in to this. It looks like speechify don’t support Danish.

              On Resemble AI, they have something like Elevenlabs:

              For professional voice cloning through data upload, we require explicit, verifiable consent from the voice talent. This involves providing a clear audio consent statement along with the training data, so that we can confirm the identity. By uploading voice data, you’re confirming that you have such consent, which should align with our guidelines. The consent recording must follow our template, e.g., “I acknowledge my recordings will be used by [Your Company] to create a synthetic voice by Resemble AI.” For any questions regarding consent, please reach out to us.

              I will try to contact them regarding my use, which is neither commercial, nor using “voice talent” exactly.