ElevenLabs Launches Celebrity Voice Marketplace with McConaughey and Caine Partnerships

ElevenLabs' new AI marketplace lets brands use famous voices for ads

ElevenLabs is launching an online marketplace that allows companies to license AI-replicated voices of famous figures for their content and advertisements. The AI audio startup says its new Iconic Voice Marketplace resolves some of the ethical concerns around using AI-generated celebrity voices by providing brands with the "consent-based, performer-first approach the industry has been calling for." It works by connecting companies with whoever owns the rights to a specific voice, with ElevenLabs' platform serving as a middleman that formalizes the licensing deal and synthesizes the voices. ElevenLabs says the marketplace is only open to a curated list of "verified, iconic talent and IP owners," to ensure that the voices of notable figures are only generated "with permission, transparency, and fair compensation." Some of the AI voices have been achieved using cloning technology, while others have been synthetically replicated by referencing historical or archival audio. I guess it would have been a mouthful to call this a "marketplace for voices of famous people," given the list includes historical figures like Mark Twain, Thomas Edison, and Alan Turing, and most people wouldn't recognize what they actually sound like. Michael Caine is one of the few living celebrities to lend his voice to ElevenLabs, and said the company "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 said in a statement on ElevenLabs' announcement. "I've spent a lifetime telling stories. ElevenLabs will help the next generation tell theirs." Here's the full list of all 28 voices that are currently available on the marketplace:

Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine sign voice deal with AI company

The voices of the Oscar-winning actors can now be used to create AI-generated versions in a new deal with ElevenLabs Oscar-winning actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine have both signed a deal with the AI audio company ElevenLabs. The New York-based company can now create AI-generated versions of their voices as part of a bid to solve a "key ethical challenge" in the artificial intelligence industry's alliance with Hollywood. McConaughey, who has also invested in the company and collaborated with it since 2022, will now allow ElevenLabs to translate his newsletter, Lyrics of Livin', into a Spanish-language audio version using his voice. In a statement, the Dallas Buyers Club actor said he was "impressed" by ElevenLabs and wanted the partnership to help him "reach and connect with even more people". His voice had already been on the company's ElevenReader app, which allows users to have celebrity voices read emails or books to them. ElevenLabs is also launching the Iconic Voices Marketplace, which will allow brands to partner with the company and use officially licensed celebrity voices for AI-generated usage. Caine's new deal has made his distinctive voice part of its lineup. "For years, I've lent my voice to stories that moved people - tales of courage, of wit, of the human spirit," Caine said in a statement. "Now, I'm helping others find theirs. With ElevenLabs, we can preserve and share voices - not just mine, but anyone's." The actor went on to say that the company is "using innovation not to replace humanity, but to celebrate it", and that it's "not about replacing voices; it's about amplifying them". Caine recently revealed that he would be coming out of retirement for a role opposite Vin Diesel in The Last Witch Hunter 2. Other voices that are part of the marketplace include dead Hollywood stars such as John Wayne, Rock Hudson and Judy Garland as well as those still living such as Liza Minnelli and Art Garfunkel. The list also includes figures such as Amelia Earhart, Babe Ruth, J Robert Oppenheimer, Maya Angelou and Alan Turing. ElevenLabs was recently valued at about $6.6bn. The news follows other celebrity partnership deals with AI such as the many major names who signed up to have their voices used by Meta. Last year, the company revealed a list that includes Judi Dench, John Cena and Kristen Bell. Other names, such as Ashton Kutcher and Leonardo DiCaprio, have also invested in AI companies.

Matthew McConaughey, Michael Caine sell their voices to AI podcast company

ElevenLabs is launching its Iconic Voice Marketplace and Matthew McConaughey is becoming an investor. Credit: David Parry/PA Images via Getty Images Looks like AI is alright, alright, alright to actor Matthew McConaughey...and a slew of other celebrities too. According to a new report from Variety, Matthew McConaughey has partnered with the AI audio company ElevenLabs for a new project, a Spanish-language audio version of his newsletter "Lyrics of Livin'," and the actor doesn't even need to know Spanish to do it. McConaughey's voice will be cloned and the audio will be created using ElevenLabs technology. In addition to the new collaboration, McConaughey, who reportedly has worked with ElevenLabs before, is now an investor in the company as well. "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. "I launched my newsletter, 'Lyrics of Livin',' as a way to share stories and ideas in my own voice with those who want to listen. Now, thanks to ElevenLabs, 'Lyrics of Livin'' is expanding with a Spanish language edition, allowing us to reach and connect with even more people." McConaughey's not the only celebrity partnering with ElevenLabs either. ElevenLabs also announced the launch of its new Iconic Voice Marketplace, which will let third-parties request approval to use AI-cloned voices from a roster of famous actors, musical artists, and sports stars. Acting legend Michael Caine has shared that he will be cloning his voice for the company's Iconic Voice Marketplace. ElevenLab's also shared a list of other voices (alive and dead) available in its Iconic Voice Marketplace, including Judy Garland, John Wayne, Liza Minnelli, Laurence Olivier, Maya Angelou, and Babe Ruth. The marketplace also includes historical figures such as Thomas Edison and Mark Twain. According to ElevenLabs, there are currently 28 celebrity voices available in the marketplace. (Note: Matthew McConaughey is not part of the Iconic Voice Marketplace.) Hollywood, SAG, and other actors and artists' representatives have struggled with how to deal with the growing threat of AI over the past few years. Studios looking to cut costs continue to push for AI, whereas artists and their fans have criticized the use of AI in the arts. Recently, Zelda Williams, daughter of the late Robin Williams, denounced the use of AI to create depictions of her father online without any consent. ElevenLabs has clearly been paying attention with its Iconic Voice Marketplace, highlighting how it requires artists or their families to fully consent to any AI usage of the celebrity's likeness. However, the fact that legends like Michael Caine are taking part in this shows that some actors may feel like this is the way the industry is going, whether they like it or not, and adapting is the best way to maintain some control over their voice.

Need Lana Turner or Babe Ruth to Send You a Voice Note? This AI Firm Has You Covered

Artificial-intelligence company ElevenLabs says it is bringing on Matthew McConaughey as an investor as it makes a push to expand its voice offerings to a public seeking the digital locutions of the dead and famous. As part of that push, the company is also launching an "iconic voice marketplace" which will allow users -- mainly brands -- to connect with reps for celebrities living and long gone and work out a licensing deal to use their AI voices. Part-tech company and part AI-voice bazaar, ElevenLabs has thousands of voices of lesser known people it has enlisted for AI voice-generation. Those people, who have consented for an AI to be trained on their voices, can be prompted to say what a subscriber needs them to say without further agreement. (Well, their voice avatars can be thus prompted.) They ring up a commission each time a customer does so -- an Etsy for vocal chords. But what ElevenLabs has yet to do is allow companies (or deep-pocketed people with unconventional appetites) to pay for a customized AI voice from an iconic celebrity, uttering the words the company needs it to say. Enter the "marketplace," under which customers can interface with the celebrity, or their reps or estate managers, to negotiate a paid license for said celebrity's commercial AI-generated message. The upside for the company is the chance to have a celebrity read a promotional message that they need read. The upside for the celebrity is getting paid without having to read anything. The list of actors joining the marketplace isn't long but it is bonkers, and includes the not-so-recently-departed, such as John Wayne, Lana Turner, Judy Garland and Shoeless Joe Jackson (for the 1919 Black Sox fan in your life). It also includes some living celebrities, such as Michael Caine, Liza Minelli and Art Garfunkel. (For a complete list see below.) These celebrities or their estates have only agreed to let their voices be trained; agreements would need to be negotiated separately. Still, the marketplace streamlines the process of hiring a famous AI voice and brings us one step closer to an entertainment world you never imagined and your grandmother would have shooed you for suggesting: a world in which the 20th-century sports or screen icon doesn't go away, they just keep declaiming to us from beyond the grave. Imagine Amelia Earhart selling you airline tickets. J. Robert Oppenheimer pitching alternative energy. Richard Feynman teaching that adult ed class. Judy Garland hawking paving stones. Laurence Olivier peddling Halloween skulls. (Come on, you'd buy that last one.) "We're looking to create a library of iconic voices from all kinds of time periods that can be used for all kinds of creative projects," Dustin Blank, who heads partnerships at ElevenLabs, tells The Hollywood Reporter. "They occupy a space in our collective memory around a lot of important moments." Just the same, he says, this dead-celebrity play should hardly be seen as the company's main use case. "We also have living celebrities and living icons. It's just another offering," he said. To produce these voices, the company uses both voice cloning (capturing the characteristics of a person's voice) and voice replication (which then kicks in when someone prompts a voice using text.) While video generation has grabbed many of the headlines, that realm is painstaking and filled with errors, which is why many experts see AI voices as a much nearer frontier in the push to make media synthetic. McConaughey has already made his own voice available for the ElevenReader app, a pre-existing product that allows customers to chose from a list of authorized voices to read any memo or book to them personally. (If you don't want your emails read to you by Wooderson I honestly don't even know what to tell you.) In addition to his investment of an undisclosed sum, McConaughey will also use ElevenLabs to translate his newsletter Lyrics of Livin' into a fluent flawlessly accented Spanish, which he apparently does not speak. "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," the actor said in a statement. "I launched my newsletter, Lyrics of Livin', as a way to share stories and ideas in my own voice with those who want to listen. Now, thanks to ElevenLabs, Lyrics of Livin' is expanding with a Spanish language edition, allowing us to reach and connect with even more people." McConaughey in the past has expressed both interest in and caution about AI, saying while he'd like to use it to get to know himself better, he prefers models he can train only on his own material to mass-produced systems like ChatGPT. "I do have a little pride about not wanting to use an open-ended AI to share my information so it can be part of the worldwide AI vernacular," he said on Joe Rogan's podcast last month. I am interested, though, in a private LLM where I can upload, hey, here's three books I've written. Here's my other favorite book. Here's my favorite articles I've been cutting and pasting over the 10 years. And log all that in...so I can ask it questions based on that and basically learn more about myself." Caine is also joining the ElevenReader app; if you've ever wanted War and Peace narrated to you in a Cockney accent, this is your chance. "With ElevenLabs, we can preserve and share voices -- not just mine, but anyone's," Caine said (presumably in his own voice). A litany of VC's have poured at least $279 million into ElevenLabs in the four years since its founding by a pair of Polish-born entrepeneurs named Piotr Dąbkowski and Mati Staniszewski, who worked at Google and Palantir, respectively. They and their partners say voice technology doesn't just connect past generations to the present but living people from different linguistic parts of the globe whose voices would otherwise never be heard. "To everyone building with voice technology: keep going. You're helping create a future where we can look up from our screens and connect through something as timeless as humanity itself -- our voices," McConaughey said in a statement. The company also has a suite of other products, such as "Speech Synthesis," which aims to produce lifelike speech from text, and Conversation AI, which will help developers perfect the voice of AI Agents. If we are soon awash in AI voices -- and increasingly unable to tell them apart from human ones -- ElevenLabs will be the reason why. By giving the famous the ability to negotiate their own deals (and working out a profit-share when they do), ElevenLabs is also avoiding the kind of unlicensed training of celebrity content endemic to some rivals. "This model enables ethical sourcing and licensing of some of the world's most recognizable voices, personalities, and brands -- ensuring that creative use of iconic identities is transparent, fair, and authorized," ElevenLabs said in a press release. Still, even with the ethical sourcing, the question remains whether society should head to a place of dead-voice overload. First, there's the matter of how it might crowd out workaday voice actors. Second, there's the matter of whether we want to be awash in the sounds of Thomas Edison and Mark Twain when the lightbulb and Tom Sawyer seem like legacy enough. ElevenLabs executives say they see little downside in a world of late famous voices available at the swipe of a screen. "There's definitely a demand," Blank said. "We're here to move that along and make sure there's a marketplace where it can be filled." Here's the full list of iconic voices available for potential licensing on the Iconic Voice Marketplace: