AI voice cloning complicates estate planning for celebrities’ legacies

Before Franz Kafka died in 1924, He had a simple wish for his friend and literary administrator Max Brod: Burn all of Kafka's unpublished writings and essays.

Fortunately for the rest of the world, Brod largely ignored what Kafka said, which is why we have works like this today The castle And The processnot to mention the word “Kafkaesque.” But Kafka's story raises the question of what rights artists, musicians, writers and celebrities in general have should dispose of their work after their death. And these questions become even more important in the age of AI, when it's not just about a person's work that can live on after them, but about their actual voice.

Michael Caine talks like that

AI audio startup ElevenLabs, which generates amazingly realistic synthetic speech, just rolled out an “Iconic Voices” marketplace that allows companies to legally license AI versions of well-known voices – some living, many deceased – for ads and other content.

On the living side, actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine have signed on. McConaughey – an investor in the company – plans to use his synthesized voice to convey his “Lyrics by Livin'” newsletter in Spanish that shows how the technology can be used to localize content around the world. (Muy bien, muy bien, muy bien, like the Spanish AI McConaughey one could put it.) Caine, one of England's most famous actors, enters the market as the voice of the holiday and argued that the move should be seen as a reinforcement of human storytellers rather than a replacement for them.

As strange as it is to imagine an AI speaking with Caine's inimitable Cockney accent – and frankly, not an AI can do Caine better than those two guys The trip – At least he made the active decision to sign it during his lifetime. But ElevenLabs also has estate deals that allow users to hear narrations in the voices of historical figures such as Judy Garland, James Dean, Maya Angelou and AI pioneer Alan Turing. (That's right, the genius who once said that if computers became smarter than humans, “we as a species should feel very humiliated” will now lend his posthumous voice to the machines.)

That is far from the case Projecting a holographic Tupac Shakur for a “duet” with Snoop Dogg at Coachella in 2012. We are generate new measured values in the singing style of someone who can't agree today.

The incentives are obvious. Synthetic voices are cheaper than staging a hologram tour and more scalable than booking a top-notch narrator. With a modest archive, you can generate hours of multilingual audio that sounds believably like the original. In the company's defense, ElevenLabs says its marketplace relays everything through the rights holders of deceased characters to address concerns about ethics and abuse. That means the heirs get paid, and that's it better than a deepfake AI-for-allbut the core fact remains: once a voice is an asset, the estate becomes the product manager for a digital mind.

This is where the Kafka lesson comes into play. If you're a famous person who wants control over posthumous AI content based on yourself – or really anyone who works in creative fields – hire a real estate attorney to write down those requirements now. Do you allow the creation of a synthetic voice after death? If yes, for what? Are archival restorations and documentation OK, but not advertising, political content or interactive chatbots? Who controls the emergency switch: a literary executor, a family council, an independent trustee? If you don't want your AI voice speaking on ChatGPT 55.7 in 2060, don't leave that decision to a board meeting long after your stint in the Oscars “In Memoriam” segment.

Kafka's fame is a consistent argument that sometimes it benefits the world to betray an artist's final wish. But if you, as a famous person, definitely don't want to leave the fate of your voice to chance, learn from the example of British fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett. At his very specific request, a hard drive with his unfinished books was ceremoniously razed to the ground from a steamroller in 2017. Try to reconstruct that.

A version of this story originally appeared in Future perfect newsletter. Register here!