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.

'Every kind of creative discipline is in danger': Lincoln Lawyer author on the dangers of AI Michael Connelly says tech is moving so fast that he feared his new novel would seem'archaic' before it was published H e is one of the most prolific writers in publishing, averaging more than a novel a year. But even Michael Connelly, the author of the bestselling Lincoln Lawyer series, feared he might fall behind when writing about AI. Connelly's eighth novel in the series, to be released on Tuesday, centres on a lawsuit against an AI company whose chatbot told a 16-year-old boy that it was OK for him to kill his ex-girlfriend for being unfaithful. But as he was writing, he witnessed the technology altering the way the world worked so rapidly that he feared his plot might become out of date. "You don't have to lick your finger and hold it up to the wind to know that AI is a massive change that's coming to science, culture, medicine, everything," he said.

Filmmakers have been trying to adapt Stephen King's The Dark Tower series for more than a decade. But with time-jumping metanarratives and compulsive genre-switching, the eight novels proved tough to wrangle into one film-able narrative. Director Nikolaj Arcel's version of King's events finally hits theaters today. Written by no fewer than four writers (not including King), the movie arrives with a lean 95-minute runtime and the kind of Rotten Tomatoes score (21% and barely climbing) that studios fear. But is it possible the critics aren't being fair?