It doesn’t take the Wizard of Oz to recreate Judy Garland‘s voice — just AI.
The late, legendary actress is being reintroduced to audiences via AI audio company ElevenLabs, which received permission from Garland’s daughter Liza Minnelli to use her voice in its new “Iconic Voices” option on the Reader App. Users will be able to hear “Garland” read them books, articles, and essays.
“It’s exciting to see our mother’s voice available to the countless millions of people who love her,” Minnelli, who is the representative of Garland’s estate, said in a statement to media. “Through the spectacular new technology offered by ElevenLabs, our family believes that this will bring new fans to Mama, and be exciting to those who already cherish the unparalleled legacy that Mama gave and continues to give to the world.”
Other voices that ElevenLabs has recreated include James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Laurence Olivier. The respective estates of each deceased celebrity has given ElevenLabs legal permission to recreate their voices to narrate on the Reader App, the AI company says.
“Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds, and Sir Laurence Olivier are some of the most celebrated actors in history. We deeply respect their legacy and are honored to have their voices as part of our platform,” Dustin Blank, head of partnerships at ElevenLabs, said. “Adding them to our growing list of narrators marks a major step forward in our mission of making content accessible in any language and voice.”
The app is free to download and use for the first three months. The platform is currently only available in select countries on iOS, but will be made available worldwide and on Android in the coming weeks.
While ElevenLabs has legally been able to replicate these actors’ voices, another AI company, OpenAI found itself embroiled in controversy recently when Scarlett Johansson called it out for allegedly using a soundalike voice for its Sky ChatGPT 4.0 system. Johansson, the star of “Her,” said she turned down working with OpenAI and was later “shocked, angered, and in disbelief” by what she heard.
“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference,” Johansson said. “In a time when we are all grappling with deepfakes and the protection of our own likeness, our own work, our own identities, I believe these are questions that deserve absolute clarity. I look forward to resolution in the form of transparency and the passage of appropriate legislation to help ensure that individual rights are protected.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman denied that Johansson was the inspiration for the voice of Sky.
“The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers. We cast the voice actor behind Sky’s voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson,” Altman said. “Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky’s voice in our products. We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”
The company also issued a statement, reading: “We believe that AI voices should not deliberately mimic a celebrity’s distinctive voice — Sky’s voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice. To protect their privacy, we cannot share the names of our voice talents.”
