ALS stole this musician's voice. AI let him sing again. Patrick Darling used a music tool from ElevenLabs to perform a song with his former bandmates. There are tears in the audience as Patrick Darling's song begins to play. It's a heartfelt song written for his great-grandfather, whom he never got the chance to meet. But this performance is emotional for another reason: It's Darling's first time on stage with his bandmates since he lost the ability to sing two years ago.

Oscar-winning actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine have both signed a deal with the AI audio company ElevenLabs. The New York-based company can now create AI-generated versions of their voices as part of a bid to solve a "key ethical challenge" in the artificial intelligence industry's alliance with Hollywood. Emma Thompson speaks of her'intense irritation' with AI McConaughey, who has also invested in the company and collaborated with it since 2022, will now allow ElevenLabs to translate his newsletter, Lyrics of Livin', into a Spanish-language audio version using his voice. In a statement, the Dallas Buyers Club actor said he was "impressed" by ElevenLabs and wanted the partnership to help him "reach and connect with even more people". ElevenLabs is also launching the Iconic Voices Marketplace, which will allow brands to partner with the company and use officially licensed celebrity voices for AI-generated usage.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) speech generation and voice cloning technologies have produced naturalistic speech and accurate voice replication, yet their influence on sociotechnical systems across diverse accents and linguistic traits is not fully understood. This study evaluates two synthetic AI voice services (Speechify and ElevenLabs) through a mixed methods approach using surveys and interviews to assess technical performance and uncover how users' lived experiences influence their perceptions of accent variations in these speech technologies. Our findings reveal technical performance disparities across five regional, English-language accents and demonstrate how current speech generation technologies may inadvertently reinforce linguistic privilege and accent-based discrimination, potentially creating new forms of digital exclusion. Overall, our study highlights the need for inclusive design and regulation by providing actionable insights for developers, policymakers, and organizations to ensure equitable and socially responsible AI speech technologies.

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).

I'd been waiting, compulsively checking my inbox. I opened the email and scrolled until I saw a button that said, plainly, "Use voice." I considered saying something aloud to mark the occasion, but that felt wrong. The computer would now speak for me. I had thought it'd be fun, and uncanny, to clone my voice. I'd sought out the AI start-up ElevenLabs, paid 22 for a "creator" account, and uploaded some recordings of myself. A few hours later, I typed some words into a text box, hit "Enter," and there I was: all the nasal lilts, hesitations, pauses, and mid-Atlantic-by-way-of-Ohio vowels that make my voice mine.

A few days ago, I watched a video of myself talking in perfect Chinese. I've been studying the language on and off for only a few years, and I'm far from fluent. But there I was, pronouncing each character flawlessly in the correct tone, just as a native speaker would. Gone were my grammar mistakes and awkward pauses, replaced by a smooth and slightly alien-sounding voice. "My favorite food is sushi," I said--wo zui xihuan de shiwu shi shousi--with no hint of excitement or joy.

On a recent night, a woman named Robin was asleep next to her husband, Steve, in their Brooklyn home, when her phone buzzed on the bedside table. Robin is in her mid-thirties with long, dirty-blond hair. She works as an interior designer, specializing in luxury homes. The couple had gone out to a natural-wine bar in Cobble Hill that evening, and had come home a few hours earlier and gone to bed. Their two young children were asleep in bedrooms down the hall.

A coalition of 20 tech companies signed an agreement Friday to help prevent AI deepfakes in the critical 2024 elections taking place in more than 40 countries. OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, Adobe and X are among the businesses joining the pact to prevent and combat AI-generated content that could influence voters. However, the agreement's vague language and lack of binding enforcement call into question whether it goes far enough. The list of companies signing the "Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections" includes those that create and distribute AI models, as well as social platforms where the deepfakes are most likely to pop up. The signees are Adobe, Amazon, Anthropic, Arm, ElevenLabs, Google, IBM, Inflection AI, LinkedIn, McAfee, Meta, Microsoft, Nota, OpenAI, Snap Inc., Stability AI, TikTok, Trend Micro, Truepic and X (formerly Twitter).

The parents of a teenager who was killed in Florida's Parkland school shooting in 2018 have started a bold new project called The Shotline to lobby for stricter gun laws in the country. The Shotline uses AI to recreate the voices of children killed by gun violence and send recordings through automated calls to lawmakers, The Wall Street Journal reported. The project launched on Wednesday, six years after a gunman killed 17 people and injured more than a dozen at a high school in Parkland, Florida. It features the voice of six children, some as young as ten, and young adults, who have lost their lives in incidents of gun violence across the US. Once you type in your zip code, The Shotline finds your local representative and lets you place an automated call from one of the six dead people in their own voice, urging for stronger gun control laws.

ElevenLabs, an AI startup that offers voice cloning services with its tools, has banned the user that created an audio deepfake of Joe Biden used in an attempt to disrupt the elections, according to Bloomberg. The audio impersonating the president was used in a robocall that went out to some voters in New Hampshire last week, telling them not to vote in their state's primary. It initially wasn't clear what technology was used to copy Biden's voice, but a thorough analysis by security company Pindrop showed that the perpetrators used ElevanLabs' tools. The security firm removed the background noise and cleaned the robocall's audio before comparing it to samples from more than 120 voice synthesis technologies used to generate deepfakes. Pindrop CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan told Wired that it "came back well north of 99 percent that it was ElevenLabs."