{"id":108158,"date":"2026-07-16T13:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T13:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/108158\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T13:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T13:05:10","slug":"i-cloned-my-voice-with-ai-so-my-son-could-hear-bedtime-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/108158\/","title":{"rendered":"I Cloned My Voice With AI so My Son Could Hear Bedtime Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Max Fricke, founder of HuggleTales<\/a>. It has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

My 3-year-old son loves listening to stories I’ve made up for him. So when I travel, which I do frequently for work, we both miss out on our bedtime routine<\/a> of creating stories.<\/p>\n

I was on a monthlong trip when I had an idea: what if I could create an AI that could replicate my voice<\/a> and tell my son the stories he loved so much?<\/p>\n

I’m creative, but like many parents, I am also tired. On that trip, I was frustrated: my Wifi connection wasn’t great, and my stories just weren’t resonating with my son the way they usually did, so I had started using AI to generate story ideas<\/a>. It was fun, and I was able to create stories that helped my son process his day. I realized there was a lot of potential there.<\/p>\n

My son was already used to listening to audio stories<\/p>\n

My son already enjoyed using the Toniebox<\/a>, a child-focused speaker. The speaker allows kids to place a figurine on top of the box, and the selected figurine tells a specific story. My son really liked having the autonomy to choose what story he listened to.<\/p>\n

Our Toniebox let me record my voice for our son, so he could choose to play that particular story. This tool allowed my son to hear my voice while I wasn’t available, but it didn’t allow us to create the fluid, engaging stories he was used to hearing at bedtime.<\/p>\n

I envisioned a product that would allow him to ask for a story, say about butterflies and dragons. Then, he could hear the story immediately, in my voice, even when I wasn’t available.<\/p>\n

I vibe-coded an app, and spent hours replicating my voice<\/p>\n

I’m not a coder, but I downloaded Basecamp, which let me vibe-code an AI product<\/a>. I experimented with creating prompts that produced more creative stories with ChatGPT and Gemini.<\/p>\n

Cloning my voice was the hardest part. Even that term \u2014 cloning \u2014 sounds creepy to lots of people. When my son first heard my AI-generated voice<\/a>, he was skeptical because it didn’t sound exactly like me. But as I refined the model, he didn’t notice the difference between my voice recordings and the AI-produced voice.<\/p>\n

Today, the voice sounds exactly like me, 90% of the time. That’s enough for my son to enjoy listening to it almost as much as he enjoys hearing my stories in person.<\/p>\n

My son benefits the most from the AI storytelling<\/p>\n

I don’t want HuggleTales \u2014 the app that I’ve developed \u2014 to replace the emotional connection of a phone call or FaceTime. I still tell my son stories over the phone or in person. However, now we have another tool: when he wants to hear my voice, he can use the app.<\/p>\n

It’s also helpful when I’m tired. We’ve all struggled to come up with a story at the end of a long day. Sometimes, my son and I will give the app a prompt, and lie together to listen to a story told in my voice. That might be odd to some, but for me it’s just another way to connect with my son.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, all the work I’ve put into this app is for my son. He’s the one who benefits. When I’m at work, I still miss him, but now he can get an emotional hug from me, even when I’m not around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Max Fricke, founder of HuggleTales. It has been edited…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,3962,25,55888,55882,55884,2517,55883,55886,6198,55887,49775,55885,752,14191,809],"class_list":["post-108158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-app","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bedtime-routine","tag-bedtime-story","tag-child-focused-speaker","tag-day","tag-figurine","tag-huggletales","tag-lot","tag-phone-call","tag-son","tag-toniebox","tag-tool","tag-voice","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}