Veteran actor Sir Michael Caine has partnered with an AI company licensing the voices of public figures.
The film star, who is known for his distinctive Cockney accent, will join ElevenLabs’ Iconic Voice Marketplace, where companies and creatives can request to use the actor’s voice for projects and content.
The 92-year-old said: “For years, I’ve lent my voice to stories that moved people — tales of courage, of wit, of the human spirit. Now, I’m helping others find theirs.
“With ElevenLabs, we can preserve and share voices — not just mine, but anyone’s.
“ElevenLabs is at the very forefront of technology, using innovation not to replace humanity, but to celebrate it.
“ElevenLabs gives everyone the tools to be heard.
“It’s not about replacing voices, it’s about amplifying them, opening doors for new storytellers everywhere.”
Caine, whose voice will be used on the ElevenReader app to narrate books, articles and PDFs, joins more than 25 other well-known voices that are available on the Marketplace, including that of actress and singer Liza Minnelli.
Also included are a number of figures who died decades before the turn of the 21st century, including mathematician Alan Turing, “father of the atomic bomb” J Robert Oppenheimer and aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, who disappeared over the Pacific Ocean and was presumed dead in 1937.
The company said its Iconic Voice Marketplace is “a curated, two-sided platform” that “solves a key ethical challenge in AI-driven media creation by enabling the ethical sourcing and licensing of some of the world’s most recognisable voices”.
ElevenLabs is also working with Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, who has become an investor.
McConaughey, 56, who launched a newsletter titled Lyrics Of Livin’ earlier in the year is releasing a Spanish audio version with the help of ElevenLabs.
Generative AI has been a controversial topic of discussion in recent years and many celebrities have fallen victim to deep fake imagery, which is when AI is used to replicate the likeness of an individual.
This has extended to voice replication and last year OpenAI said it would “pause” the use of one of the voices in ChatGPT after it drew comparisons with Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson, who said she was “shocked” and “angered” at how “eerily similar” it sounded to her own voice.
Also in 2024, it was announced that an AI version of Sir Michael Parkinson’s voice would appear in interview-style podcast series, Virtually Parkinson.
Benjamin Field, co-founder of Deep Fusion Films, who made the podcast, spoke about the rise of AI at a select committee in December 2024 and told MPs that a dead celebrity’s voice can be put into a TV, film or podcast with no restrictions.
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