It’s getting on for 30 years since Jerry Garcia passed away, but Deadheads now have an opportunity to hear the voice of the band once more – through the power of AI. A new partnership with ElevenLabs, an AI audio research company and the guitarist’s estate has produced a Garcia-voice model that can read all sorts of written content.
So audiobooks, poetry, recipe instructions and more can now be heard in Garcia’s much-missed husky tones. And not just in English, but in 32 different languages via the app ElevenLabs have developed.
In addition to the ElevenReader, Garcia’s voice model will also be used in a number of upcoming projects associated with the Jerry Garcia Foundation. This could include narrated documentaries, audio art exhibits and more.
Garcia is not the first famous voice ElevenLabs has preserved in this way. Similar models featuring icons such as Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and Sir Laurence Olivier have also been produced. The app has been produced in close collaboration with the Garcia estate, who seem to be fully onboard with the project.
“My father was a pioneering artist, who embraced innovative audio and visual technologies,” Keelin Garcia, daughter of Jerry and Co-Founder and Vice President of the Jerry Garcia Foundation told Billboard. “In the 1990s, my dad introduced me to the computer, digital art, and video games. When we travelled 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.”
Garcia once reportedly said "I'd rather have my immortality while I'm alive. I don't care if it lasts beyond me at all. I'd just as soon it didn't", but you can expect more of this sort of thing in the years to come.
Already the Edith Piaf estate have partnered an AI company to replicate the late singer’s voice for an upcoming biopic next year. Just last month it was announced that Universal Music and the AI company SoundLabs were creating a new Spanish language version of Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree, titled Noche Buena Y Navidad. The latter though can be excused from any accusations of necrophilia – Lee, aged 78, is still very much with us and gave her assent to the project.
