Radio Drama · 2026-06-29
Artificial Michael Caine: an AI voice reads the Odyssey
The AI-cloned voice of British acting legend Michael Caine narrates Homer's Odyssey in a roughly 13-hour, entirely AI-produced audiobook, released ahead of Christopher Nolan's forthcoming film.
The audiobook was released free by the AI company ElevenLabs on its own ElevenReader platform. Caine did not record the text himself: his voice is an AI replica, used after the actor licensed his voice and likeness the previous year on the company's "Iconic Marketplace." Every element of the production is machine-made: the supporting voices come from ElevenLabs' voice library, and the music and sound effects are AI-generated too; only four people worked on it.
The timing is no accident: Christopher Nolan's Odyssey reaches cinemas on 17 July (the audiobook is not an official tie-in to the film). The case sharpens the legal and ethical debate around voice cloning and fully AI-produced audio content: what does "acting" mean when the voice is a machine copy? (Sources: GameStar; NBC News)
This article was machine-composed under human supervision.