(Picture: Getty Images)
Actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine have made deals with an AI audio company to create virtual versions of their voices — a move that’s sparked plenty of online debate.
McConaughey, who’s also investing in the New York–based company ElevenLabs, has been collaborating with them since the company’s 2022 founding.
The partnership has now taken a new turn: the actor’s reflective newsletter Lyrics of Livin’ will soon have a Spanish-language edition, voiced entirely by an AI clone of McConaughey himself.
‘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.
He framed the expansion as a mission to ‘connect through something as timeless as humanity itself — our voices.’
Sir Michael Caine, meanwhile, is joining ElevenLabs’ newly launched Iconic Voice Marketplace, which licenses AI replicas of famous voices for approved creative projects.
Through this platform, companies can request the use of Caine’s digital voice for narrations, campaigns, and storytelling ventures.
The 92-year-old actor described the partnership as a way to extend storytelling itself: ‘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.’
He added, ‘It’s not about replacing voices; it’s about amplifying them, opening doors for new storytellers everywhere.’
Caine joins a surreal roll call of digital legends available through ElevenLabs’ marketplace, from Judy Garland and Maya Angelou to John Wayne, Alan Turing, and even Babe Ruth.
ElevenLabs insists its platform ‘solves a key ethical challenge in AI-driven media creation by enabling the ethical sourcing and licensing of some of the world’s most recognizable voices.’
But for many fans, ‘ethical’ is not the word that comes to mind. Reaction online was swift and divided.
‘This is gonna take jobs from young guys tryna get into the industry,’ wrote @SaquonMVP on X.
User @popbm1999 agreed: ‘No please don’t normalise this, it’s gonna harm a lot of artists.’
Others were more cynical — @DustinHatley7 simply wrote, ‘Sold their souls to the devil.’
Some accused the actors of hiding profit motives behind lofty talk of human connection.
‘If you want to profit from using AI yourself, just say that,’ said @LucaGuadagnegro, ‘but let’s not make this a self-righteous exclamation about benefitting and connecting humanity….’
Yet not everyone saw doom. ‘Honestly, this is a smart idea,’ countered @CaseyRyback00. ‘It is going to happen anyway by nefarious individuals and companies. AI firms that have an artist’s best interest in mind will be the only viable solution. Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine are smart as hell.’
Others even saw immortality in the deal: ‘Good, now actors never need to die. They can act as we want them to, forever,’ wrote @EwenCamero87818.
The debate exemplifies a conversation at the heart of AI’s cultural takeover: whether technology like ElevenLabs’ is a means of preserving art or replacing the artists.
McConaughey’s optimism and Caine’s faith in ‘amplifying humanity’ may be genuine or just a money grab, but for many creators watching the industry shift beneath their feet, those words sound less like inspiration and more like a heavy omen.
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