Caine in The Italian Job. Photograph: Moviestore Collection/Rex View image in fullscreen Caine in The Italian Job. Photograph: Moviestore Collection/Rex Michael Caine You’re only supposed to blow the bloody hooves off: AI Michael Caine narrates Odyssey audiobook AI company ElevenLabs unveils its officially licensed replica of the iconic actor’s voice in a retelling of Homer’s epic poem, while director who previously recorded the star recalls real-life experience
Prefer the Guardian on Google Next month, Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster version of The Odyssey is set to storm cinemas around the globe. Auguries suggest the almost three-hour drama will repeat the success of Nolan’s previous film both at the box office (Oppenheimer took nearly a billion dollars) and the Academy Awards (it won seven Oscars).
But before that, a new audiobook version of Homer’s tale has been released starring one of Nolan’s most frequent collaborators: Michael Caine , with whom he has worked on eight films, including the Dark Knight trilogy.
View image in fullscreen Michael Caine in Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film The Prestige. Photograph: Warner Bros/Sportsphoto/Allstar Caine, now 93, announced his retirement at the Red Sea film festival in Saudi Arabia last December. It was the fourth time he has done so , and seems as unlikely to be binding as the previous three times, particularly thanks to a deal the actor struck shortly beforehand to license an AI version of his voice.
In November 2025, Caine and Matthew McConaughey became the highest-profile stars to sign on with ElevenLabs, the $11bn AI audio generation and voice cloning company that enables brands, studios and creators to rent celebrity voices from its Iconic Voice Marketplace.
Read more Such tools mean even death will not wither A-listers’ abilities to appear in new adverts, films or on GPS devices, as the licensing can continue – pending estate approval – for eternity.
Although many people in the film and TV industry are sceptical about the rise of AI – as personified by the entirely fabricated star Tilly Norwood – some actors have gone even further than Caine and McConaughey by allowing their likenesses to be used as well as their voices. Bruce Willis retired from acting in 2022 before a diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia, but his “digital twin” appeared in a Russian telecommunications advert in 2022. More recently, the children and estate of the late actor Val Kilmer approved an AI version of his voice and likeness which will shortly be seen in new western As Deep as the Grave.
Caine’s voice is one of the most instantly recognisable and oft-mimicked in British cinema history. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s Caine-off, in which they compete to give the finer impression – and explain why either the nasal or throaty approach is correct – is often reckoned to be the highlight of Michael Winterbottom’s series The Trip. The pair were then upstaged by the man himself at the Royal Albert Hall in 2014.
The 13-hour Odyssey audiobook is ElevenLabs’ inaugural in-house production and billed as “the company’s first cinematic multicast audiobook, combining Sir Michael Caine’s™ official AI voice replica, a full cast performance, original music and immersive sound design”.
While Nolan’s screenplay draws on Emily Wilson’s revisionist 2017 translation for inspiration, ElevenLabs used the text translated by William Cullen Bryant in the 1870s. No academics were involved, they confirmed, but ensuring the correct p…