During the final weeks of his battle with ALS, the late actor Eric Dane teamed up with ElevenLabs to restore his voice with the use of artificial intelligence technology—creating an emotional moment for his family, friends, and nurses when they heard how authentic it was.
“The final version of Eric’s voice sounded exactly like him,” Rebecca Gayheart Dane, his widow, said during a recent discussion at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW. “If you are familiar with him at all, you know he had a very distinct voice and he had a distinct way of telling his stories—he was witty, acerbic, he just had a lot of personality—and this voice captured that so perfectly. It sounded so real.”
ElevenLabs, the New York-based AI voice technology company that made all of that possible, now has its sights set on providing one million people with free access to voice-restoration technology.
But that wasn’t part of its original mission; rather, the company launched in 2022 with a voice model that turned text into audio, making it “sound human” with emotions and intonations, explained Mati Staniszewski, the company’s cofounder and CEO.
“Very organically, a lot of people started reaching out to be able to use that technology when they lost their voice,” Staniszewski explained.
As those stories continued to pour in, the company opened up an impact program to provide the technology for free—such that now someone can send a voice sample on a Monday and have a sample by the end of the week.
‘HOW AI CAN BE USED FOR GOOD’
ElevenLabs has now helped restore the voices of about 7,000 people worldwide, of which 11 of their stories are documented in “11 Voices,” a documentary series it premiered at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Some of those stories capture “deeply emotional” moments, which makes the company’s work very motivating, Staniszewski said.
“It just reaffirms the commitment to the mission of transforming the interactions with each other with technology, through technology, around the world.”
Having seen how much happiness it brought to Dane to have his voice restored before the Grey Anatomy star’s death last month, Gayheart Dane is continuing his advocacy work by supporting the “1 Million Voices” initiative—and she’s inspired by how many people this technology could help.
“It’s AI being used ethically for a great reason,” she said. “A lot of people are cautious around AI, but I think this is the best example of how AI can be used for good.”