Celebrity Voices Resurrected: ElevenLabs Brings Dead Hollywood Stars Back to Life

The AI voice startup ElevenLabs has expanded its Reader app to include AI-generated voices of late Hollywood celebrities Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Laurence Olivier, in partnership with intellectual property rights firm CMG Worldwide.

Reader app converts text to AI-narrated audio: The iOS app allows users to input any digital text, such as articles, PDFs, or e-books, and instantly generate an AI voiceover in various voices and accents, with a green highlighter following along with the narration.

• The addition of iconic celebrity voices enables users to experience content narrated in the voice of late stars, potentially driving more engagement with the app.
• For the celebs’ family members, this AI voice recreation is an opportunity to ensure their legacies live on and connect with existing and new fans.

Safety measures to prevent voice cloning abuse: ElevenLabs has implemented safeguards to address concerns about potential misuse of voice cloning technology:

• Celebrity voices are only available on the Reader app, where users can convert text to AI narration for individual consumption, without the ability to share or download the content.
• Automated and human moderation processes identify and block harmful content, hate speech, and text that violates the company’s terms of service.
• A voice captcha verification system matches uploaded audio samples with the user’s voice recording to prevent unauthorized cloning attempts.
• A “no go” voices policy prohibits the cloning of high-risk voices.

Broader implications and future developments: While ElevenLabs has taken steps to reduce the chances of voice cloning misuse, there may still be instances of violations, such as crafting content that bypasses moderation measures. As the Reader app rolls out globally and to Android devices this summer, with support for more languages, it will be interesting to observe how the iconic voices feature impacts the industry and whether the safety measures prove effective in preventing abuse of the technology.