ElevenLabs creates voice clones for Judy Garland and James Dean using artificial intelligence

Judy Garland died 55 years ago – but if you insert any document, e-book or file into a new AI app, you’ll hear her voice reading it to you.

Text-to-speech AI startup ElevenLabs announced Tuesday that its free reader app uses AI cloning to replicate the unique voices of Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and Sir Laurence Olivier.

The app, which was released last week for iOS (pre-registration is available for Android), takes any PDF, article or text and turns it into a voiceover that sounds like one of the iconic voices—complete with emotion and contextual understanding.

“It is exciting to see that our mother’s voice is now available to the countless millions of people who love her,” Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland and representative of the Garland Estate, said in the press release. Minnelli added, “Our family believes this will bring new fans to Mama.”

ElevenLabs worked with the estates of the deceased stars to develop the technology.

The startup imagines that users listen Sherlock Houses in Olivier’s voice or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in Garland’s voice.

^{Judy Garland in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz” directed by Victor Fleming. Photo credit: Getty Images}

Voice cloning is not a new application of AI, and some of its use cases can be problematic. For example, there have been attempts to extort money and personal information from people by cloning audio data.

Related: Fraudsters use AI to clone the voice of your loved ones

ElevenLabs users can easily create audio deepfakes, or realistic-sounding imitations of a voice. In January 2023, the startup admitted that its technology had been used “for malicious purposes” and decided to put voice cloning behind a paywall.

At the time of this writing, ElevenLabs’ security page states that the company moderates all content through automated and human review, tracks content to people who abuse it, and reports illegal activity to law enforcement.

Outside of ElevenLabs, the ethical acceptability of voice cloning has also come under fire recently. Scarlett Johanssen filed legal action against ChatGPT maker OpenAI in May when the voice of the latest ChatGPT model was “so eerily similar” to hers that her “closest friends and media couldn’t tell the difference.”

Related: Scarlett Johansson, OpenAI controversy just beginning: lawyer