The voices of Judy Garland and James Dean are being used in a new AI app. The move could end up hurting other actors

Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds — these names all share two things in common.

They’re both Hollywood legends and also very dead.

But now, a new artificial intelligence (AI) app is attempting to bring them back to life to… read some emails. 

AI start-up ElevenLabs announced this week they would use the voices of legendary Hollywood stars as part of its text reader app. 

The voices would be narrating articles, PDFS, ePublications, newsletters or any other text format. 

Here’s what you need to know. 

Who’s involved? 

So far, ElevenLabs has procured the voices of Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and Sir Laurence Olivier.

It says it partnered with the dead celebrity estates — for an undisclosed sum. 

Liza Minnelli, Garland’s daughter, says the partnership “will bring new fans to Mama, and be exciting to those who already cherish the unparalleled legacy that Mama gave”.

Celebrity agency CMG worldwide helped pave the way for the partnership and said the app provided “new opportunities” for its clients. 

“We appreciate their thoughtful approach in working with talent in the right way,” chief marketing officer Tina Xavie said. 

ElevenLabs says the partnership will “deeply respect” the legacy of the celebrities. 

The voices will not be incorporated into the company’s larger audio database. 

Is this even legal?  

Hollywood union SAG-AFTRA has recently sponsored a bill that would stop dead performers being from replicated in audiovisual works and sound recordings without the consent of their estate.

Los Angeles SAG-AFTRA president Jodi Long said the bill now before the Californian Senate would stop the dead becoming someone’s “unpaid digital puppet”.

In this particular case, chief scientist at UNSW’s AI institute, professor Toby Walsh, says the permission of the estates does a lot to assuage this fear.

Still, there is the copyright to think of.

“These systems are first trained on tens of thousands of hours of audio, so they can speak,” Professor Walsh says.

“And then they’re fine-tuned to speak in a way that sounds like a particular person (here, a dead actor).

“And often that first step, training on tens of thousands of hours of audio, uses content that is scraped from the web without consent, or compensation and that is likely under copyright.

“So not all of the copyright concerns go away.”

Beyond the legal issues, distinguished professor of digital media at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Jean Burgess is unconvinced the voices could remain true to their purpose. 

“So they may keep the training data locked up for a particular purpose but then if you take the audiobook that’s produced using that training data, it could be used as training data for other kinds of purposes down the line.”

Who else could be affected?

For voice actors, the technology could seriously disrupt their way of life.

Professor Burgess, who is also the director at QUT’s GenAI Lab, says the deal makes for “interesting downstream implications”. 

“(It’s) likely to become a harsh reality for many really skilled voice actors who are making up the bulk of their living through this sort of work, and subsidising their other, more artistic and creative activity in that way.”