ElevenLabs Partners with Stan Lee Universe for AI Voice

The late Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee will return to fans through a new artificial intelligence partnership that recreates his voice and likeness for audiobooks, digital cameos, and commercial projects. The deal between AI company ElevenLabs and Stan Lee Universe, the joint venture managing Lee's legacy, was announced this week.

Lee, who co-created iconic characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men and died in 2018, will narrate a monthly series of public domain books through ElevenLabs' Reader app. The "Stan Lee Book of the Month Club" will launch in June with Robert Louis Stevensons' "Treasure Island," followed by a new title each month for a year. Users can also select the AI-generated voice to narrate any book in the app's library.

The voice model was trained on professional archival recordings of Lee. His cloned voice will also be available on ElevenLabs' Iconic Marketplace, a platform where companies and creators can license celebrity voices for commercial and editorial content. His likeness will be added to the company's visual generator, allowing users to create comic book-inspired images and videos featuring Lee, reminiscent of his famous film cameos. These visual templates...