(CNN) Actress Judy Garland never recorded her voice to read an audiobook of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but you'll soon be able to hear her rendition of the children's novel that inspired the film.
Earlier this week, AI company ElevenLabs said The company has launched a new Reader app that lets you create digitally produced voiceovers by celebrities including Garland, James Dean and Burt Reynolds. The app takes articles, PDFs, ePubs, newsletters, eBooks or any other text on your phone and turns it into a voiceover.
“We deeply respect their legacy and are honored to have their voices on our platform,” said Dustin Blank, Head of Partnerships at ElevenLabs. “Adding them to our growing roster of narrators marks a major milestone in our mission to make content accessible in every language and voice.”
The company said it has reached agreements with the estates of the actors whose voices are used, but did not provide details on compensation. The move shows the potential of artificial intelligence for Hollywood, but also sets a precedent for licensing and working with estates. It also comes at a time when technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, particularly in its ability to create images, text and sound, making it easy for anyone to create a version of someone’s voice saying something they never said.
This has, in turn, raised questions in creative industries such as journalism and film about how artificial intelligence can or even should be used.
ElevenLabs had already made headlines earlier this year when its tool was allegedly used to create a fake automated call President Joe Biden urging people not to vote in New Hampshire's presidential primary.
Copyright and Authenticity Issues
The partnership with the stars' domains comes two months after ChatGPT creator OpenAI was criticized after introducing a synthetic voice eerily similar to that of Scarlett Johansson's character in the film Her. said In a statement shared with CNN, she said she was shocked, angry and in disbelief that the company would use her image after she declined a partnership opportunity with OpenAI.
While it’s impossible to copyright your own voice, it is possible to copyright a recording, according to David Gunkel, a professor in the department of communications at Northern Illinois University who studies artificial intelligence in media and entertainment. AI is trained on old recordings, and those recordings are copyrighted.
ElevenLabs' new partnerships are all within the bounds of the law, he said. An estate will receive a substantial sum of money from licenses and deals. It's not unlike a company negotiating a copyright deal to use a popular Queen song in an ad. The record company could also theoretically refuse, no matter how much money it's offered.
Bern Elliot, vice president and analyst at market research firm Gartner, said AI models can now be trained on fewer audio recordings; very little is needed to capture tone, speech patterns and other elements, whether it's a celebrity or an ordinary person.
The biggest concern is what the owner of those recordings can or cannot do to monetize the voice, he said.
Media companies are also stepping up their use of AI for voiceovers. Last week, NBC announced it would bring back an AI version of popular sportscaster Al Michaels to the network. Olympic Games this summerin daily recaps on its streaming platform Peacock. An NBC spokesperson told CNN that Michaels was compensated for his involvement.
It is unclear, however, how AI versions of well-known voices will be received by the general public and whether this will raise concerns about their authenticity.
“We don’t know the expected market for this type of thing yet, but you can already see with audiobooks that those read by recognizable voices and celebrities are a hot commodity,” Gunkel said. If there were a way to get a celebrity to produce any type of content without speaking themselves, it could open up the market even more.
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