Can you think of a better way to get into the Halloween spirit than listening to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow read by the ghost of James Dean?
The actor’s career may have ended tragically in 1955, but his estate is keeping his paychecks afloat through artificial intelligence. Along with the estates of Judy Garland, Laurence Olivier, and Burt Reynolds, it signed on with AI voice-cloning startup ElevenLabs in July as part of the company’s “Iconic Voices” project. The actor now narrates books, articles, and other textual content inserted into ElevenLabs’ Reader app; essentially, Garland can now read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or your tax return to you — the choice is yours.
The dead-celebrity industry has proven profitable. Michael Jackson was nearly $500 million in debt when he died, but according to People, his wealth has grown to a whopping $2 billion, thanks to projects like jukebox musicals and even exhibits showcasing work he did while he was alive. Yet advances in AI mean that deceased artists like Jackson can still create new art.
Intellectual property lawyer Mark Roesler has represented more than 3,000 celebrities, most of whom are deceased, and brokered nearly 30,000 deals on their behalf since founding his company, CMG Worldwide Inc., more than four decades ago. Among current clients including Rosa Parks and Malcolm X, he has negotiated his own ElevenLabs deal with Jerry Garcia.
Roesler says there are two main ways a living celebrity makes money. The first is personal services, which, for a musician like Prince, would be the income from his concerts and songs. The second is intellectual property, which is independent of those services and could be anything from copyrights to music to photographs.
When a celebrity dies, the revenue from their personal services ends immediately, leaving their estate with just intellectual property revenue, which, Roessler found, previously declined by an average of 10% a year but can now grow. “I’m helped by all the technological changes like AI,” he says. “With intellectual property, there are so many different uses for it.”
For example, Travis Cloyd, founder and CEO of Worldwide XR (where Roessler is chairman), has cast Dean in the film Return to Eden, which is currently in production. Cloyd says that now that the celebrities are gone, filmmakers have two options: “You can either hire an actor or, thanks to technology, you can create a digital James Dean person.”
The latter process starts with a base of source material, so-called legacy assets that include family videos. These are put through machine learning to create a digital model of the actor. From there, other elements are created using body doubles for skin texture and movement, and vocals are layered on top.
It’s similar to how Paul Walker (Furious 7) and Peter Cushing (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) gave their controversial CGI renditions nearly a decade ago. Ian Holm, who died in 2020, having a bigger role in this summer’s Alien: Romulus infuriated critics and did little to calm the ethical debate around AI, even though his widow, children and estate signed off on it.
Hollywood is slowly moving in this direction after last year’s actors and writers strikes brought the industry to a standstill over a number of issues, not least of which was AI. In August, SAG-Aftra reached an agreement allowing brands to mimic the voices of live actors in AI audio ads on a job-by-job basis.
For the dead, sheer demand will dictate the terms, says Cloyd. He says the potential for AI projects to become the main source of income for celebrity estates in the next five years is huge: “With the rise of digital platforms, streaming services and virtual experiences, there are ample opportunities for celebrities to monetise their legacies in new and exciting ways.”
Consider ABBA Voyage, which opens in London in May 2022 and is earning more than $2 million a week with concerts featuring de-aged, virtual-reality avatars of the Swedish pop stars. Although all four collaborated on the show and were all alive as of press time, these CGI renderings could theoretically continue earning money for their estates even after their deaths.
Not everyone agrees. Jeff Jampol, who manages “passive artists” including Janis Joplin and The Doors, considers AI a “non-starter.” He has turned down offers to mimic Jim Morrison’s voice and sees the technology as a fad, like nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. “There will be more,” he says, noting that in his decades of experience in the industry “waves come and go.” But mostly, “I can’t put anything in Jim Morrison’s mouth that he never said. That would be a travesty.”
Jampol compares handling an artist’s legacy to lighting six matches on a fireplace. Every venture they sign on to is like lighting a match. “They put it in the fireplace, and the fireplace burns, and then nine seconds later the match goes out. You’re left with an empty, cold, dark fireplace and a lit match. Just repeat that five times, and that’s the end of a 25-year legacy,” he says. “How they lived, what they said and what they created, that’s their legacy. I can’t change that.”
Svana Gisla, the Emmy and Grammy-nominated co-producer behind ABBA Voyage, which did not use AI in cloning the singers, thinks there’s a key place where new technology falls short. “We will always look for the emotional connection that’s inherent in the communication that art brings,” she says, “and AI will never provide that communication or replace artistry in any form.”
Perhaps the biggest test of AI will come next spring, when Elvis Evolution premieres at ExCeL London and sees the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll perform for the first time in more than 45 years. For the nearly two-hour immersive biopic — think the earthy scent of cotton fields and increased humidity to evoke rural Mississippi — capturing the icon’s stage presence as a hologram was no easy task, says Andrew McGinnis, founder and CEO of Layered Reality, the show’s producer.
“It’s not some kind of fabrication or the work of a digital artist,” he says. “It actually comes from his real-life performances, his real-life facial movements, his real-life voice structure,” and creating his digital double required hundreds of hours of performance and home videos fed into AI software. Layered Reality had access to the entire archive of his home-turned-museum Graceland.
“If you want, you can see what he had for lunch on a particular day 45 years ago,” says McGuinness. Elvis’ favorite dishes can also be found by fans at the bar, which maintains a 1960s atmosphere as they leave the show.
Will the infamous peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich be added to the menu? McGuinness declined to comment.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
