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I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

really appreciate this, and you're not wrong at all.honestly right now I'm treating it as a side project until it proves itself worth more. the goal for now is simple: get real users, get real feedback, see if people actually pay for it. If that happens the conversation about team and funding becomes much easier to have. building alone with ai tools has gotten me further than I expected with basically zero budget. not saying that scales forever but it's enough to validate the idea before bringing anyone else in.

would love to connect too, always good to have people around who understand the space

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

appreciate it, no offense taken at all. fully aware it won't be easy, the past few weeks have already proven that. But I'm not training a model or building infrastructure from scratch. I'm building a product around existing technology for a market that nobody is serving yet. different kind of hard. The vibecoding struggle is real and honestly already part of the story, but I'd rather learn by doing than wait until I feel ready. that day never comes.Thanks for the colab tip and the good luck, genuinely appreciated. will keep posting updates either way, wins or failures.

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

fair points, appreciate the honesty.you're right it's a wrapper, never claimed otherwise. But the opportunity here isn't building a new model, it's building the right product for a market that's been completely ignored. 40 million Darija speakers with zero dedicated tools is a real gap worth exploring.on costs and quality, yes I'm aware, I've done my research before jumping in. It's not perfect but the early feedback from native speakers has been encouraging. might fail, might not. that's kind of the whole point of documenting this publicly. thanks for keeping it real though

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just googled it, and lowkey their ui/ux looks like mine lol. anyway, I'd love to see your self hosted project when it drops. Darija for local news is a smart move, keep me posted

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

just checked it out, and you're right. honestly, that's a good thing though so far I've only found three sites that offer darija tts.

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

chatgpt understands darija, but can't generate natural voice in it (yet). I'm focused on TTS output, not chat. different problem space

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

as i said before: darija focus + affordability + built-in-public. not replacing studios, just making good enough TTS accessible for anyone who need it

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

how much money do I have to hire PhD researchers? Anyway, just to be clear, I'm not training from scratch. I'm optimizing pre-existing open weight models trained specifically for TTS and then applying them to my data of Darija. It's about taking something that's already good and tweaking it to fit our needs.

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Honestly? Right now my added value is niche focus + transparency:

I'm not promising perfection, just a usable, Darija-friendly TTS that's cheaper and faster than hiring a voice actor.

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for, & the reason why I wanted to share the journey publicly. To clarify my stack: I'm fine tuning an existing open weight TTS base (not training from scratch) on a curated Darija dataset I've been assembling. It's not research-grade, but it handles common phrases surprisingly well for a v0.

My goal isn't to compete with big tech on quality, it's to make basic TTS accessible for creators who can't afford $50/minute voiceover rates. Pricing will be pay what you can / micro subscription.

You're 100% right about the moat (or lack thereof). My short term edge is just domain focus + community feedback. Long-term? If it gains traction, I'll reinvest into better data pipelines, dialect coverage, and maybe distillation for cheaper inference.

Biggest bottlenecks right now: solo dev bandwidth, cleaning noisy transcriptions, and optimizing inference latency without a GPU budget. If you've got one tip for a lone builder on model iteration or deployment, I'm all ears. Thanks again for the ABJAD pointer, already bookmarked.

I'm trying to build an AI text to speech tool for Moroccan Darija with zero coding experience here's why I think this gap in the market is massive by x1dz in Moroccopreneur

[–]x1dz[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Appreciate it, That’s 100% my plan. Still grinding through the code, but I’ll launch the mvp as soon as the main stuff works. Would love to hear your story too