The estate of Jerry Garcia has partnered with vocal AI company ElevenLabs to bring the late Grateful Dead guitarist, singer and songwriter's AI-recreated voice to the Iconic Listening Experience in the ElevenReader app. Now, Deadheads using the app can hear Garcia's voice read audiobooks, e-books, articles, poetry, fan stories, PDFs and more in 32 different languages.
Garcia is the latest in a series of collaborations between ElevenLabs and famous estates. Already, the voice AI company has featured voice models for Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and Sir Laurence Olivier in its Iconic Listening Experience. According to a company spokesperson, ElevenLabs worked “closely with the Jerry Garcia Estate to ensure that the reproduction of Garcia's voice was as authentic and true to his legacy as possible.”
In addition to ElevenReader, Garcia's voice model will also be used in various upcoming projects related to the Jerry Garcia Foundation. This could include narrated documentaries, audio art exhibits and more.
This announcement with the Garcia estate shows ElevenLabs taking another step to penetrate the music AI space. In May, the company's chief design officer Ammaar Reshi gave a “very early preview» of an ElevenLabs AI music generator on X, formerly known as Twitter. For now, however, Garcia's voice model is only available for reading various texts.
The Garcia voice model is the latest case of deceased or older musicians and their estates working with AI companies to market the artists' catalogs and personas to the next generation of fans. Warner Music and the estate of the 'La Vie En Rose' singer. Edith Piaffor example, it partnered with an artificial intelligence company to bring the late French singer's voice back to life for an upcoming biopic, and last month, Universal Music Enterprises and Brenda Lee used AI to translate Hot 100 No. 1 hit of “Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree” in Spanish, allowing Lee, now 79, to recreate the youthful tone of her voice from when she first recorded the song.
“My father was a pioneering artist, embracing innovative audio and visual technologies,” he says Killeen Garciadaughter of Jerry and co-founder and vice president of the Jerry Garcia Foundation. “In the 1990s, my father introduced me to computers, digital art and video games. When we were traveling on concert tour, we played on the Game Boy. At home, we would 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 transcript of my father's voice reading their favorite books and other written content.”
“At ElevenLabs, we are committed to preserving and celebrating cultural legacies while pushing the boundaries of technology,” he said. Dustin BlankHead of Partnerships at ElevenLabs. “By bringing voices like Jerry Garcia to our platform, we're not just improving our app—we're creating new ways for people to experience content. This project has been a labor of love, and we couldn't be happier with how Jerry's voice has It's beautiful to bring his sound to life again for both longtime fans and a new generation of listeners.”
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/pro/jerry-garcia-ai-voice-read-books-articles-elevenlabs/
