Her place in film history was secured when she famously sang'Somewhere over the Rainbow' in'The Wizard of Oz'. Now, fans of Judy Garland can continue to listen to her voice from beyond the grave, as part of a new deal to narrate audiobooks using artificial intelligence. ElevenLabs, a London-based business launched by two Polish entrepreneurs, said it had reached deals with the estates of Ms Garland and Sir Laurence Olivier to clone their voices. Users who download an app will then be able to pick celebrities – including those who are no longer alive – to narrate their favourite books, articles and even PDFs. 'It's exciting to see our mother's voice available to the countless millions of people who love her,' said Liza Minnelli, Ms Garland's daughter and representative of her estate. Her place in film history was secured when she famously sang'Somewhere over the Rainbow' in the 1939 film'The Wizard of Oz' (pictured).

Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has confirmed it used AI voice cloning software to reconstruct the voice of a deceased actor for its Phantom Liberty DLC. Actor Miłogost Reczek voiced the character Viktor Vektor in the Polish version of the game and would have been tapped to reprise the role for the DLC, which came out last month, but he died in 2021 before its production. The developer told Bloomberg it decided to go this route as a way to "pay tribute to his wonderful performance," and was given permission to do so by his family. Instead of replacing Reczek outright, CD Projekt Red worked with Respeecher, the Ukraine-based voice tech company known for deaging Mark Hamill's voice in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett to create a young Luke Skywalker. Another actor was hired to speak the new lines, and Respeecher's software reworked them into Reczek's voice, CD Projekt localization director Mikołaj Szwed told Bloomberg.