Lauren Huff is a writer at Entertainment Weekly with over a decade of experience covering all facets of the entertainment industry. After graduating with honors from the University of Texas at Austin , Lauren wrote about film, television, awards season, music, and more for the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline Hollywood, Us Weekly, Awards Circuit, and others before landing at EW in May 2019.
“Judy Garland, James Dean, Burt Reynolds and Sir Laurence Olivier are some of the most celebrated actors in history. We deeply respect their legacy and are honored to have their voices as part of our platform,” Dustin Blank, head of partnerships at ElevenLabs, said. “Adding them to our growing list of narrators marks a major step forward in our mission of making content accessible in any language and voice.
The app, which is free to download and use for the first 3 months, is currently only available in select countries on iOS, but will be made available worldwide and on Android in the coming weeks once multilingual support is available, per the company.Scarlett Johansson made headlines when she accused the tech company OpenAI of featuring a voice"eerily similar" to her own in the latest version of its ChatGPT bot after Johansson expressly declined to lend her voice to the system, a move that she said left her"shocked" and"forced to hire legal counsel" to address the matter. Johansson called for new laws to address issues of AI technology and individual rights.
The use of AI in the entertainment industry was also a divisive topic as labor union SAG-AFTRA negotiated with Hollywood studios during . The actors' union secured"consent and compensation guardrails" on the use of AI; studios must obtain an actor's informed consent before creating or using a digital replica of any performer, from A-list stars too background actors.