In a new audiobook edition of the “Odyssey,” Homer’s nearly 3,000-year-old epic poem, the voice of the British actor Michael Caine delivers the story’s soaring opening lines in his distinctive, gravelly staccato.
“Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man who, having overthrown the sacred town of Ilium, wandered far and visited the capitals of many nations, learned the customs of their dwellers, and endured great suffering on the deep,” Caine’s voice intones over a soft, melancholy orchestral score.
Caine is the latest celebrity to lend his voice to Homer’s epic, following acclaimed narrations of the “Odyssey” by actors like Claire Danes and Ian McKellen. But Caine isn’t really telling the story. Instead, he licensed his voice to ElevenLabs, a company that produces audiobooks and other content voiced by artificial intelligence, which used an A.I. clone of his voice for the project.
A team of four producers created the 13-hour audiobook, which came out on Tuesday and is available free on the company’s ElevenReader platform. The production features Caine’s voice clone and a supporting cast of 20 different A.I. voices layered with A.I.-generated sound effects and a musical score, and was put together in just over six weeks.
The project, explained Jack McDermott, who leads mobile growth and marketing at ElevenLabs, is meant to showcase the creative potential of voice clones and A.I. narration — all while capitalizing on heightened interest in the “Odyssey” ahead of Christopher Nolan’s Hollywood adaptation, which comes out in July and stars Matt Damon, Tom Holland and Anne Hathaway.
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