Sir Michael Caine has not returned to acting — but his AI-generated voice has been resurrected to narrate Homer’s Odyssey, in a 13-hour audiobook produced by the AI audio company ElevenLabs that is intended to capitalise on the hype surrounding Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming blockbuster film adaptation of the epic poem.
The audiobook, which is available for free exclusively on the ElevenReader app, is the company’s first in-house production and features Caine’s official AI voice replica alongside a full cast of AI-generated character voices, original music and immersive sound design. Caine, 93, announced his retirement at the Red Sea film festival in Saudi Arabia last December — the fourth time he has done so — but had already signed a deal with ElevenLabs in November 2025, alongside Matthew McConaughey, to license an AI version of his voice through the company’s Iconic Voice Marketplace. ElevenLabs, founded in 2022 and valued at $11bn, allows brands, studios and creators to rent celebrity voices. Dustin Blank, who leads partnerships at ElevenLabs, said Caine was consulted about the project and approved the use of his voice and promotional materials, adding that the actor’s agreement is based on “consent and compensation”. Blank praised Caine’s foresight, calling him “a leader in this space because he’s been a part of crafting the first steps and his own legacy”.
The Odyssey audiobook was completed in just six weeks by four producers — a significant acceleration from the traditional months-long process of casting, recording, sound design and post-production, according to ElevenLabs. The company used the 1870s translation by William Cullen Bryant, rather than the 2017 translation by Emily Wilson that inspired Nolan’s screenplay. No academics were involved in the selection, though ensuring correct pronunciation of characters’ names was described as a “painstaking process”. Supporting cast members were “auditioned” from ElevenLabs’ library of voices, with their remuneration calculated according to the number of letters of the alphabet their voice spoke. Some 22 million people have so far been paid in this way. Members of the Iconic range, however, have power of veto over the projects their voices appear in. ElevenLabs says the technology will allow “more product out there and more opportunity for people to get through the door”, with future projects likely to include audiobook versions of canonical texts released before landmark new movies such as Dune 3 and Netflix’s Pride & Prejudice.
The ethical implications of AI voice cloning
While Caine and McConaughey are the highest-profile stars to sign with ElevenLabs, the rise of AI-generated voices and likenesses in entertainment has provoked deep unease across the film and television industry. The entirely fabricated star Tilly Norwood — a completely AI-generated actor — epitomises the existential threat many performers fear. Concerns over the devaluation of creative work, unauthorised reuse of performances and the ethical boundaries of digital replicas fuelled the strikes by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA. The latest SAG-AFTRA contract now requires explicit permission and fair compensation for any digital replica of an actor. Morgan Freeman has publicly stated that his lawyers are pursuing cases where his voice has been cloned without permission.
Some actors have gone further than Caine by allowing their likenesses as well as their voices to be used. Bruce Willis retired from acting in 2022 after a diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, but his “digital twin” appeared in a Russian telecommunications advert the same year. Reports of a deal with the Russian company Deepcake were initially denied by Willis’s representatives, though Deepcake claimed they had used his likeness for a one-time project. Willis himself reportedly said the technology offered a “great opportunity for me to go back in time”. The late actor Val Kilmer, who lost his voice after being diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, had his voice recreated by AI for Top Gun: Maverick. Now, an AI version of his voice and likeness, approved by his estate, will shortly be seen in the new western As Deep as the Grave. His daughter Mercedes stated that Kilmer “always looked at emerging technologies with optimism”. The production reportedly adhered to SAG guidelines and compensated Kilmer’s estate.
ElevenLabs itself has faced scrutiny over misuse of its technology. In January 2023, the company acknowledged “an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases” and committed to implementing new safeguards, after a user mimicked President Joe Biden’s voice in a robocall. The company says it has measures in place to block the cloning of high-profile voices without consent. Dustin Blank argues that criticisms of job displacement miss the point: “Human ingenuity is creating these prompts and putting the pieces together, and we’re hiring new types of jobs to support this.” ElevenLabs previously experimented with an AI-narrated version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz using a replica of Judy Garland’s voice, with the blessing of Liza Minnelli.
Yet the limitations of the technology are evident in the Odyssey audiobook itself. In the opening chapter, Caine’s narrative voice is “strikingly lifelike if remarkably uniform”, more homogenous than a traditional performance and flatter than some of the other AI character voices, such as a “fruity Zeus”. Isabella Webber, the writer-director of a short film called Bobby for which Caine recorded non-AI narration in his London flat a month before signing the ElevenLabs deal, contrasted the two approaches. “The humanity and the happy accidents give you things you’d never be able to predict,” she said. “Whereas the thing with AI is that everything’s predictable.” Caine’s performance for Webber — done with a microphone and script in hand, after a period of sitting on his sofa watching Sky Sports — was “immensely characterful”, she said, and allowed him to recount stories his father had told him about the war. “It isn’t just a voice; it’s a lifetime of experience.” The Bobby trailer features a snippet of Caine’s voiceover: slow, gravelly, imperfect.
Michael Caine: a career of pragmatism and persistence
Michael Caine is one of Britain’s most recognisable and prolific actors, with more than 150 films to his name. A six-time Oscar nominee and two-time winner, his roles range from Alfie, Get Carter, Zulu and The Man Who Would Be King to Sleuth, Educating Rita, Hannah and Her Sisters, Miss Congeniality, The Cider House Rules, Youth and A Muppet Christmas Carol. He is a frequent collaborator of Christopher Nolan, appearing in eight of the director’s films including the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet — though he does not appear in Nolan’s upcoming Odyssey.
Caine has long been frank about prizing commercial pragmatism over creative fulfilment. Of his involvement in the critically panned Jaws: The Revenge (1987), for which he received $1m for a fortnight’s work, he famously said: “I have never seen the film, but by all accounts it is terrible. However I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.” He first retired in 2009 after the gang crime drama Harry Brown, then again 24 films later in 2021 after Best Sellers. He returned for the little-seen Czech historical drama Medieval in 2022, and the following year starred in The Great Escaper as a D-day veteran, earning rave reviews. He told Radio 4 that would be his last film, but later suggested to the Guardian he would shortly shoot a biopic of Charles Darwin. “And that’ll be it. I won’t do another one after.” When questioned whether he was certain, Caine said: “No! But the point is, can you do it? Can you remember all the lines? I’ve got used to not working and staying in bed till 11am and staying out late at night. I love it.” Anthony Hopkins has since been announced as the star of the Darwin film, while Caine’s mooted return as a priest in The Last Witch Hunter 2 also seems unlikely to materialise.
Caine provided narration for the audio versions of his 2010 and 2018 memoirs, but Eddie Marsden took over for 2024’s Don’t Look Back, You’ll Trip Over: My Guide to Life and for the audio version of Caine’s first novel, a thriller called Deadly Game, in 2023. Caine’s deal with ElevenLabs now ensures that even death will not end his ability to appear in new adverts, films or GPS devices — the licensing can continue, pending estate approval, for eternity. In a statement about the Odyssey audiobook, Caine described the poem as “one of the greatest stories ever told”, and said: “By bridging classical storytelling with digital innovation, this timeless epic is reimagined for modern audiences, brought vividly to life through ElevenReader’s cutting-edge technology.” Dustin Blank of ElevenLabs noted that the company would be open to collaborating with big-name directors and to unconventional casting such as gender-flipped classics: “I love that idea — and we should.”
