ElevenLabs is enlisting star power to turn up the volume on synthetic speech, signing licensing deals with actors Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey and debuting a marketplace where brands can purchase access to authorized celebrity AI voices. The move sets the fast-growing generative audio company up to normalize a practice that Hollywood has viewed warily ever since AI flashpoints during last year’s strikes.
McConaughey, who is an investor in the company, will use his AI voice to turn his newsletter into a Spanish audio edition, representing a tangible, near-term application: multilingual reach without having to record entire sessions again. ElevenLabs says the new marketplace will also showcase the likes of Caine and estates for late legends such as Dr. Maya Angelou, with opt-in voices from public figures with rights cleared for commercial use to be thrown into that mix as well, among others who can lend their name recognition.
Why Celebrities Are Warming Up To AI Voices
Talent, for its part, may calculate that many have finally moved on from fear of replacement to a sense of control and participation. After the 2023 labor actions by SAG-AFTRA and the WGA (which heavily focused on consent and compensation for AI use), some performers now view their licensed voice models as yet another revenue stream that can help them reach a wider audience around the world. A single, rights-managed voice model can be flexibly deployed for dubbed podcasts, audiobook editions, educational content, and more across languages and platforms.
The offer is simple: talent-approved models, transparent commercial terms and attribution. That is the antithesis of a deluge of unauthorized clones that have incited backlashes and takedowns across social platforms. By offering an edited, rights-first catalog, ElevenLabs is trying to attract advertisers, studios, game developers and publishers that want cachet without legal risks.
Inside the Licensing Marketplace for AI Voices
ElevenLabs’ marketplace hopes to be a kind of rights library for voice, where pricing and allowed use are laid out upfront — think campaigns, trailers, in-app narration, or game NPCs. The company already provides text-to-speech, voice cloning and dubbing tools in dozens of languages; the marketplace layers on talent approvals and brand-safe guardrails. Count on consent logs, usage monitoring and detection tools to flag up unauthorized copies or out-of-scope use.
This model is a replica of the successful examples in music and cinema licenses that were applied here to AI voice. Grimes, for instance, allowed creators to include an AI version of her voice in their work in 2023 with a 50% revenue deal and proved that clear-cut terms could encourage widespread experimentation while fairly compensating the rights holder. A centralized marketplace could normalize those norms for voice acting at scale.
Legal and Labor Guardrails for AI Voice Licensing
The Hollywood context looms large. SAG-AFTRA, which represents some 160,000 performers, concluded its most recent contract with provisions regarding informed consent and fair compensation for digital replicas. Any functional marketplace will have to comply with such consent standards and union rules when applicable, particularly for franchise work and advertising.
The laws of right of publicity make it more complicated. Post-mortem publicity rights in California last 70 years, and New York added a 40-year post-mortem right in 2021 — essential for estates licensing the voices of departed legends. On the regulatory side, the EU’s AI Act mandates clear labeling for synthetic media, and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has warned marketers about deceptive AI audio, including voice-clone scams. Anticipate use reporting and watermarking to be table stakes in commercial deployments.
Rivals and Recent Precedents in Generative Audio
Competition is heating up across generative audio. Respeecher has collaborated with major studios to recreate what are known as legacy performances (most notably the voice of James Earl Jones’s Darth Vader and that of a younger Luke Skywalker), showcasing how an officially sanctioned action can maintain continuity for beloved figures. Big tech platforms are also dabbling in celebrity-led AI: Meta has been experimenting with celebrity personas, and YouTube has tested them for AI-generated music features in deals that were negotiated. Meanwhile, Amazon sunsetted celebrity voice add-ons for Alexa, underscoring how the continuous burden of maintenance and rights management can wear down always-on assistant use.
Against that backdrop, ElevenLabs certainly has momentum — it’s now one of the vertical fintech sector’s unicorns and is backed by the likes of a16z and ICONIQ. The company is betting that brand-safe, licensed voices — not the gray-market clones that dominate its shelves today — will be key to unlocking mainstream adoption in advertising, media and education. The upside for talent is potentially recurring revenue and a global audience, all without the usual travel and studio time.
What to Watch Next as Licensed AI Voices Expand
The near-term test will be the speed at which agencies and studios use licensed voices for localized campaigns and long-tail content like audiobooks and e-learning, where cost matters — and scale may be even more important. It will be about pricing transparency, revenue shares for talent, and strong watermarking. Transparent labeling in all audio metadata and consumer-facing disclaimers will help brands avoid frustrating backlash as synthetic voices become increasingly commonplace.
And if ElevenLabs can demonstrate that high-profile partnerships reduce legal risk while boosting performance metrics (higher dub rates for dubbed content; faster production cycles and cheaper localization), it could become the template for celebrity AI audio. In a space thirsty for legitimacy, consent-first marketplaces may be the line between gimmick and industry norm.
