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 on their craft.
McConaughey has been an “investor and early supporter” of the platform for years and plans to use the voice cloning technology to launch a Spanish edition of his ‘Lyrics of Livin” newsletter, according to a statement released on Tuesday.
Caine has listed his voice on the company’s new Iconic Voice Marketplace, a platform that allows brands and producers to 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 see it as an existential threat to their livelihoods.
“Since our first conversation, I have been impressed with how the ElevenLabs team has turned the magic of core technology into products that creators, enterprises and storytellers use every day,” McConaughey said in a statement from ElevenLabs, as quoted in a Variety report.
Caine’s voice is now being marketed alongside digital voice replicas of deceased celebrities Judy Garland, John Wayne, Babe Ruth and Alan Turing.
First Lady Melania Trump teamed up with ElevenLabs to publish an audiobook version of her memoir, using an AI-generated replica of her voice.
Hollywood stars are resisting
Three-time Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro declared “Fuck AI!” at a New York City screening of his Netflix film “Frankenstein” last week, later narrate NPR he would “rather die” than use generative AI in his films.
Recently at Stephen Colbert’s late showAcademy Award winner Dame Emma Thompson expressed “intense irritation” at Microsoft’s AI assistant’s offer to rewrite her scripts: “I don’t fucking need you to rewrite what I just wrote!”
“Iron Man” star and Oscar winner Robert Downey Jr. promised last October to “sue all future executives” who create unauthorized digital replicas using generative AI of his Iron Man character, while Nicolas Cage called AI ‘inhumane’, warning young actors that technology wants to ‘take away your instrument’.
Boris Rehlinger, the French voice of Ben Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix, leads the TouchePasMaVF initiative to protect human dubbing from being replaced by AI.
“I feel threatened even though my voice hasn’t been replaced by AI yet,” Rehlinger said Reuters.
The Screen Actors Guild has waged a multi-year battle over AI rights, striking for 118 days in 2023 to safe protections of the ‘threat of AI.’
Around the same time, video game artists launched a separate strike in July 2024 over AI voice cloning. which puts an end to the years of action with a contract requiring explicit consent and “cryptographic proof” for AI-generated performance.