Vegeta AI
The Digital Avatar Journey

A passion project combining AI and creativity to bring Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z to life.

Vegeta AI Project Image

Introduction

Vegeta AI is a passion project where I brought my favorite anime character, Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z, to life as an interactive digital avatar. Combining fine-tuned TTS models, LLMs, and creative engineering, Vegeta AI allows users to interact with a voice assistant that embodies Vegeta’s iconic personality, tone, and speech style.

Challenge

The main challenge was to recreate Vegeta’s voice accurately while maintaining the natural flow of his personality in interactions. Achieving this required not just technical expertise but also careful attention to detail in data processing, model fine-tuning, and system integration.

Solution

Voice Cloning with Fine-Tuning

Using the Coqui TTS framework, I fine-tuned a pretrained TTS model with Vegeta’s voice samples. The process included:

  • Cleaning and chunking Vegeta’s voice samples using voice activity detection (VAD).
  • Transcribing the processed audio clips to create high-quality text-audio pairs.
  • Fine-tuning the TTS model for Vegeta’s voice, ensuring it captured his distinct cadence and inflection.

LLM Integration

Leveraged OpenAI’s API to generate text-based responses that reflect Vegeta’s persona. The workflow involves:

  • User query → LLM generates a text response in Vegeta’s personality → Fine-tuned TTS converts the response into audio.
  • The integration ensures that Vegeta AI’s responses are not only accurate but also immersive.

Interface & Deployment

Developed a user-friendly interface using Gradio, allowing seamless interaction with Vegeta AI. The system was deployed on Hugging Face for accessibility and scalability. You can try the demo here.

Current Challenges

  • Robotic Speech: Fine-tuning speech fluency and natural intonation.
  • Pronunciation Errors: Enhancing phoneme mapping to better reflect Vegeta’s tone.

Impact

Vegeta AI bridges the gap between technology and storytelling, creating an experience that resonates with anime fans and AI enthusiasts alike. It showcases the potential of AI in recreating beloved characters and delivering personalized, engaging interactions.

Next Steps

Future improvements will focus on refining voice quality, adding more nuanced responses, and expanding the deployment capabilities for broader use cases.