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Beyond the techical answer, you may want her to record some nice personal words addressed to your family that you can listen to later.
You don't need to do anything until the worst case materialises.
We get quite a few requests for this at Resemble ( https://resemble.ai ). We can get her to record right on our website or you can upload an existing file (along with a video of her consent) on the platform. Feel free to shoot me a message and I'd be happy to help build a voice for her.
Out of interest what are the average response times to generate a clip of one or two sentences from a configured voice?
Imagining the easy text-to-speech solution the OP could build on this resemble API.
I don't know if you have kids/grandkids/nieces or nephews (or plan to have those) but it might be nice to record your wife reading some books out loud. Not only will you have your own personal "audio books" of Harry Potter/The Hobbit/Chronicles of Narnia/Oi Frog/Alice in Wonderland/Roald Dahls etc etc for any kids/grandkids/relatives etc that will hopefully be something treasured in its own right, but you'll also hav…
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Seconding this, also, reproducing her voice with an AI may not be something she is on board with, it could make her feel like you don't accept her with or without a voice. It may also be unhealthy for you, similar to how spending too long on social media can become a dangerous source of dopamine. It might make sense to consider making a recording that is more meaningful, and focus on giving her emotional support rath…
It's not like OP is replacing her entirity with Alexa, if I were the wife I'd think "sure, let's 'backup' my voice, having it available in case I lose mine would be useful, so that people can still hear my thoughts in my voice instead of a robot's."...
That very well seems to be the OP's position as well. That's a far more generous reading of the situation. It makes sense that someone here would have the mindset of "lets keep a backup in case we want access to it later."
Having spent a good deal of time in hospitals, a few things I recommend... 10’ phone cable since outlets can sometimes be far from the bed, cheap slippers she can wear to walk around (stepping in a hospital hallway mystery puddle wearing just socks is very unpleasant), comfy clothes that you don’t mind having ruined (T-shirts, underwear, shirts, pajama pants - they can temporarily unhook the IV so she can put a T-shirt on), earplugs, eye mask. If she’s going to be on liquid-only diet, bring your own since hospital food is not great, not terrible. Soylent/Orgain/Ensure if she’s permitted that, otherwise good quality Italian ices are such a nice treat and most hospitals have a patient fridge/freezer you can store them in. Broth, but go to a restaurant or grocery store/farmers market with hot soup bar and fill a container with just the broth from the chicken noodle soup. It’s INFINITELY better than boxed broth.
Hopefully all of your research and preparation will be for nothing, I wish you and your wife a successful surgery!
Outside of social situations, it honestly hasn't been that big of deal for me. As a remote developer, my job has remained the same. My managers and co workers have been super supportive. I send messages during meetings to one person who will read it aloud for me.
With text and social media, I still keep up with friends and family. Most medical appointments, etc, can be made online. SprintIP relay is free for deaf/speech impaired, and it allows the caller to type what they want to say and a representative will relay this to the other party. It works via the web or a mobile app. https://www.sprintrelay.com/sprintiprelay
Banks, brokers, or anything involving personal info (like SS#) usually requires a voice phone call. I have my wife call and explain the situation. I can whisper yes, as they occasionally require me to give permission. Some call center representatives have no idea how to handle this situation, and will just stick to the script saying they have to speak to me the entire time. My wife just thanks them, calls back, and hopes for someone more understanding.
There are awkward encounters where people don't know you can't speak, and will respond by speaking louder and slower. These people will also assume you are not intelligent and be dismissive. This is just one of the things you have to deal with.
I sincerely hope the procedure goes well and you wife doesn't have to deal with this. Just know that even if the worse happens, she can have a normal and productive life!
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I came here to say this. My brother has a PhD in chemistry and no coding experience. He was able to create a voice model of himself using basic nvidia example generators in a week. My dad lost his voice and it would have been very nice to have a TTS that was much more close to him. I personally would think it would be worth it to have that database. But obviously also attend to the human matters as well, eg spend tim…
I work in pathological speech processing/synthesis so I'm unfortunately familiar with your father's position. It really sucks that these people didn't know that archiving their voice would've been useful. I hear snippets that people manage to glean from family videos right after listening to their current voices and it makes me really sad. On the upside, your father can choose any celebrity he wants to voice him! Ton…
Something like: - Download these texts - Record in WAV at least 48 kHz - Record each line in a separate file. - Do 3 takes of each line: flat, happy, despair
Maybe even a minimal set and a full set depending on how much effort you are willing to put in.
A plain description on how to capture a raw base which within reason and technology could be used as a baseline for the most common toolkits.
I have myself looked into this (for fun) but I felt I needed a very good understanding of the toolkits before even starting to feed in data. And for my admittedly unimportant use it seemed a huge investment to create a corpus I was not even confident would work. I ended up taking the low road and used an existing voice.
Is this something that she wants? She's got a lot on her plate (emotionally and logistically) to prepare for this surgery, and maybe doesn't need a big geek project inflicted upon her just because there's a small chance of a bad outcome.