ElevenLabs Launches a Market for Celebrity AI Voices

ElevenLabs is launching its new Iconic Voice Marketplace, where companies can license AI-generated voices of famous people for ads or projects. The company is calling this a content-based, performer-first platform, which is there to solve ethical issues with cloned celebrity voices. The voices are actually cloned directly from living people like Michael Caine, while others are creepily recreated from archived audio of historical figures. This feels like another step forward towards replacing real performers, even if ElvenLabs says that’s not the goal.

There are 28 available celebrity voices right now:

• Michael Caine

• Liza Minelli

• Art Garfunkel

• Shoeless Joe Jackson

• Judy Garland

• John Wayne

• Bettie Page

• Burt Reynolds

• Maya Angelou

• Richard Feynman

• Laurence Olivier

• Amelia Earhart

• Babe Ruth

• Mark Twain

• Ty Cobb

• Jack Dempsey

• Rocky Marciano

• Al Joyner

• Johnny Weissmuller

• Jim Thorpe

• Thomas Edison

• Jean Harlow

• Lana Turner

• Mickey Rooney

• Montgomery Clift

• Alan Turing

• J. Robert Oppenheimer

• Rock Hudson

Someone from ElevenLabs, Caine, talked about replacing voices: “It’s not about replacing voices; it’s about amplifying them.” Which doesn’t feel true when this feature could replace real narrators or actors as it grows in size and gets better. It is definitely very weird how they are adding historical voices like Mark Twain and Alan Turing! I wonder if this actually celebrates storytelling, or is just another way to replace human talent with AI?

Do you think companies can actually say AI voices won’t replace actual people when there is money involved? Would you want your favorite actor or narrator’s voice brought back after decades of them being gone? Let us know in the comments!

Source: The Verge Image: ElevenLabs