Listen to the article
Academy Award-winning actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine have partnered with AI audio company ElevenLabs to create digital replicas of their iconic voices, even as prominent Hollywood figures continue to denounce AI’s encroachment into their craft.
McConaughey has been an “investor and early supporter” of the platform for years, and plans to use the voice cloning tech to launch a Spanish edition of his “Lyrics of Livin'” newsletter, according to a statement released Tuesday.
Caine has listed his voice on the company’s new Iconic Voice Marketplace, a platform that lets brands and producers pay to use AI versions of celebrity voices for everything from audiobooks to ad campaigns.
The deals mark a point of contention, with actors divided between those who embrace AI’s commercial potential and those who view it as an existential threat to their livelihoods.
“Since our first conversation, I’ve been impressed by how the ElevenLabs team has taken the magic of the core technology and turned it into products that creators, enterprises, and storytellers use daily,” McConaughey said in a statement provided by ElevenLabs, as cited in a Variety report.
Caine’s voice now joins the marketplace alongside digital voice replicas of deceased celebrities Judy Garland, John Wayne, Babe Ruth, and Alan Turing.
First Lady Melania Trump collaborated with ElevenLabs to publish an audiobook version of her memoir, using an AI-generated replica of her voice.
Hollywood Stars resist
Three-time Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro declared “fuck AI!” at a New York City screening of his Netflix film “Frankenstein” last week, later telling NPR he would “rather die” than use generative AI in his films.
Recently on Stephen Colbert’s late show, Academy Award winner Dame Emma Thompson expressed “intense irritation” with Microsoft’s AI assistant offering to rewrite her scripts: “I don’t need you to fucking rewrite what I’ve just written!”
“Iron Man” star and Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. vowed last October to “sue all future executives” who create digital replicas using generative AI of his Iron Man character without permission, while Nicolas Cage called AI “inhumane,” warning young actors the technology “wants to take your instrument.”
Boris Rehlinger, the French voice of Ben Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix, is leading the TouchePasMaVF initiative to protect human dubbing from AI replacement.
“I feel threatened even though my voice hasn’t been replaced by AI yet,” Rehlinger told Reuters.
The Screen Actors Guild has waged a multi-year fight over AI rights, striking for 118 days in 2023 to secure protections from the ‘threat of AI.’
Around the same time, video game performers launched a separate strike in July 2024 over AI voice cloning, ending the year-long action with a contract requiring explicit consent and “cryptographic proof” for any AI-generated performances.
