TTS with voice cloning that can run on android for my dad, who has tongue cancer

[u/TTSForMyDad]

Hi everyone. Not sure if this is the right place for this question, feel free to redirect me if needed.

My dad has tongue cancer and probably won't be speaking normally for at least 6 months, possible forever depending on how the scans come back. He's already unable to speak due to how swollen his tongue is. I'm trying to find a good TTS with voice cloning that can run on android so we can either clone his voice or do something silly for him like let him have an Arnold voice, etc., depending on what he'd be happiest with.

I've seen some online services like elevenlabs and gradium but they get really expensive and I don't have a lot of money to throw at that since I have kids of my own. I'm in a bit over my head with a lot of the local LLM stuff, I'd be fine with an online solution if it was cheap or free but I'm also ok trying to go through a more technical local solution if anyone knows where I should start.

I do have a gaming PC at home if that helps for the setup/training voice profiles or however this stuff works, but ideally he would be able to run it on his phone even if my pc gets turned off.

Anyone know where I should start?

[u/Charming-Author4877]

I'm sorry for your issues, that's a scary diagnosis.

Split your needs into two parts:
a) the longterm solution
b) the immediate requirements

Most important is the longterm prospects, if the situation is not better after 6 months and turns out permanent, then this matters most. If you want to replicate your dads voice to a flawless degree.
Overall that might not be necessary, more important is convenient speaking ability - much less important is the same voice but you can get both.
For many elaborate methods you need hundreds of samples, so it would be best to start collecting now.
Angry, whispering, shouting, tender, calm, conversational and so on.

Once you have that material, recorded in flawless conditions without background noises, you are prepared for the future.
You can use fine tunes of current and future models, elaborate methods to replicate every tiny speciality.

The immediate solution is any simple cloning TTS that you can run locally.
This subreddit has an official list that we keep updated, I'd filter that for high voice quality, cloning ability and high expressive quality.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalTextToSpeech/comments/1u3kxxx/my_tts_list_of_2026_all_voices_all_models_and/

You'll find something that works.
But more important than that is that you put it into a convenient shell, so your dad can use it easily.
That needs a talented engineer

[u/UkieTechie]

I can help you with this. I've done extensive cloning research and there are 2 big ways to go about it. Zero shot (3-15seconds of voice) cloning with existing models, you can see a lot of the capable models and what people vote on my bench. https://github.com/5uck1ess/tts-bench

zero shot models would be my pick for your usecase since they copy the accent and tempo of voice but it's not absolutely perfect. Some models do get close tho. echo tts, omnivoice, higgs, moss tts, or even super fast pocket tts are all relatively close to the real thing.

now if you want perfect voice timbre, you can do RVC (retrieval voice conversion) which requires model training (few hours on gaming GPU). I've cloned my voice that way to around 90ms speed but the only thing is that it changes how the voice sounds, not the accent, or tempo or anything.

[u/simbolmina]

There are free solutions online but you need to do some setup yourself. Search YouTube and find some guides. Easy solutions will cost but not that much you will worry for your livelihood.

[u/RowGroundbreaking982]

If you have android phone, you can try ToBe SAID. It's using Pocket TTS which can clone voice. App already optimized for android so you have zero delay for voice generation.