The ‘Odyssey,’ One of the World’s Oldest Stories, Gets a Modern Spin With A.I.-Generated Audiobook Narration by the Voice Clone of an Oscar Winner
Meanwhile, other actors are pushing back against the use of artificial intelligence in creative projects, including through a new “human consent” registry tool
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Homer’s Odyssey, the nearly 3,000-year-old epic poem chronicling Odysseus as he tries to return home to Ithaca following the Trojan War, is among the world’s best-known and most-replicated stories. It’s an early example of the hero’s journey archetype, perhaps the most common storytelling device in Western literature.
This month, a new entry was added to the ever-expanding library of Odyssey remakes. Production company ElevenLabs released a 13-hour audiobook adaptation of the epic poem, read by what sounds like the voice of actor Michael Caine. But there’s a twist. The narration, along with 20 other voices plus music and sound effects, was produced using artificial intelligence.
“For centuries, people have passed down stories like the Odyssey through voice and written text,” Jack McDermott, who leads marketing efforts at ElevenLabs, says in a statement. “This new production builds on that tradition. It combines human creativity and taste with A.I. audio tools that turn an ancient story into an immersive audiobook for today’s readers.”
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Caine, the 93-year-old British actor, licensed his likeness and voice to ElevenLab’s “Iconic Marketplace,” Variety’s Corbin Bolies reports. The agreement allows the firm to use A.I.-generated cloning of the actor’s voice for commercial purposes.
ElevenLabs has released similar projects in previous years, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz narrated by an A.I. replication of Judy Garland’s voice and Sherlock Holmes narrated by an A.I. replication of Laurence Olivier’s voice.
The debate over A.I. has divided Hollywood in recent years, with some actors embracing the technology and many others shunning it. More than 400 entertainment industry leaders in 2025 signed an open letter urging the U.S. government to strengthen A.I. regulations and copyright laws, CBS News’ Caitlin O’Kane reported.
This week, a new tool called the Human Consent Registry, made by an organization co-founded by actor Cate Blanchett, launched to create a public, machine-readable record giving or denying A.I. tools permission to use a person’s likeness, voice and movement. There’s no clear method of enforcement for this concept yet, reports AJ Dellinger for Gizmodo.
The issue of A.I.-generated acting is especially existential in the audiobook market.
“The slippery slope of synthetic celebrity voices is, of course, that publishers will simply license those voices for more and more projects, resulting in fewer possibilities for everyone else,” Edoardo Ballerini, an audiobook narrator, tells the New York Times’ Alexandra Alter.
Fun fact: Early copy
In 2018, archaeologists in Greece found 13 verses from the Odyssey in a clay tablet dating to the third century C.E. in the ancient city of Olympia.The new A.I. audiobook is just the latest of many, many retellings of the Odyssey throughout history.
Odysseus shows up in Dante’s Inferno, published in the 14th century, called by his Roman name Ulysses. James Joyce’s 1922 Ulysses was inspired by the epic. Some scholars argue that the entire science fiction genre owes a debt to Homer, not least the creators of the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“It occurred to us that for the Greeks, the vast stretches of the sea must have had the same sort of mystery and remoteness that space has for our generation,” Stanley Kubrick, the film’s director and co-writer, said.
And this summer, director Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of the epic poem comes out as the first Hollywood feature shot entirely on IMAX cameras, reports John Jurgensen for the Wall Street Journal.
“What had never really been done is a cinematic telling of the Odyssey with all of the capacity of a large-scale Hollywood studio production,” Nolan tells Time magazine’s Eliana Dockterman. “It’s an odd gap in movie history.”
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