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Jerry Garcia’s AI-generated voice to narrate books and articles

Tue 12 November 2024 9:52, UK

As artificial intelligence continues to integrate into various facets of society, the voice of the late Grateful Dead leader, Jerry Garcia, has been recreated using the technology. This development comes as part of a collaboration between his estate and ElevenLabs.

It has been revealed that the legendary musician’s voice can now read to ElevenReader app users their choice of articles, audiobooks, PDFs, and more conduits through what it dubs its ‘Iconic Listening Experience’. Not only that, but the hippie icon’s voice is also available in 32 different languages.

In addition to being available on the ElevenReader, Garcia’s voice model will be used in future projects from the Jerry Garcia Foundation, which was co-founded by his daughter, Keelin Garcia. They say they’re considering it for narrated documentaries and audio art exhibitions.

This isn’t ElevenLabs’s first outing in working with the estates of famous figures. It has already added the artificial intelligence voice models of James Dean, Judy Garland, Burt Reynolds and Sir Laurence Olivier to its ‘Iconic Listening Experience’.

They’re not the only company making strides in this area of the market, either. Last year, Warner Music and the estate of French singer Edith Piaf revealed their collaboration with an AI company to recreate the voice of the ‘La Vie en Rose’ icon for a biopic. In October, Universal Music and Brenda Lee employed AI to translate her festive classic ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ into Spanish, enabling the 79-year-old to reimagine her teenage voice from its original 1958 recording.

“My father was a pioneering artist who embraced innovative audio and visual technologies,” Keelin Garcia told Billboard of the latest developments regarding her late father’s voice, who passed away in 1995.

She continued: “In the 1990s, my dad introduced me to the computer, digital art, and video games. When we traveled on concert tour, we played on Game Boy. At home, we’d have fun playing on the Macintosh in the studio where my father created his first digital art, and housed his MIDI guitar. Now, as technological landscapes continue to expand, ElevenLabs AI Audio technology will offer fans the first opportunity to hear and stream a replica of my father’s voice reading their favourite books and other written content.”

“By bringing voices like Jerry Garcia to our platform, we’re not just enhancing our app – we’re creating new ways for people to experience content,” Dustin Blank, Head of Partnerships at ElevenLabs said. “This project has been a labour of love, and we couldn’t be happier with how Jerry’s voice has been recreated. It’s a beautiful thing to bring his sound to life again for both longtime fans and a new generation of listeners.”

How did Jerry Garcia die?

Despite being one of the most influential musicians of his generation, famed for his blend of Americana and psychedelic rock and the Grateful Dead’s love of extended live jams, Garcia struggled with health issues towards the end of his life, exacerbated by his lifestyle.

He struggled with diabetes later in life and, in 1986, entered a diabetic coma that almost killed him. While his health would improve to a degree after that fraught experience, his continued struggles with obesity, longtime cocaine and heroin addictions, sleep apnea and heavy smoking continued to plague him. Tragically, he was staying at the Serenity Knolls treatment centre in Forest Knolls, California, when he died of a heart attack in his room on August 9th, 1995.

His funeral was held on August 12th and was attended by family, surviving Grateful Dead members, and the likes of Bill Walton and Bob Dylan. The band’s bass player, Phil Lesh, who died on October 25th, 2024, said of Garcia’s passing: “I was struck numb. I had lost my oldest surviving friend, my brother.”