While the agreement amounted to a PR coup for the startup AI voice company \u2014 and perhaps a smart business move for McConaughey \u2014 it also set off alarm bells among industry workers, including in North Texas, who are already concerned about the broad direction of AI. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy knee jerk reaction is \u2018Yikes!\u2019, because when will it stop?\u201d said Tina Parker, a veteran North Texas-based actor<\/a> who serves as co-artistic director at Kitchen Dog Theater. \u201cOur profession \u2014 what makes it so great is that it\u2019s real people. It\u2019s real emotion. That\u2019s what it\u2019s based in, right? Whether it\u2019s film or theater or whatever.\u201d <\/p>\n Business Briefing<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n Dallas actress and theater leader Tina Parker in a scene from AMC’s “Better Call Saul.” She originated the role of Saul Goodman’s receptionist on the original “Breaking Bad” series. <\/p>\n Nicole Wilder\/AMC\/Sony Pictures Television<\/p>\n Under the deal McConaughey\u2019s voice likeness will actually be speaking en espa\u00f1ol: In a video that played at the summit, the actor said that his personal newsletter is expanding with a Spanish version<\/a> powered by the AI company. Upcoming content from the weekly newsletter, \u201cLyrics of Livin,\u2019\u201d will be available in McConaughey\u2019s voice, speaking in Spanish via ElevenLabs\u2019 technology. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first met Matthew, I was struck by how genuinely he connected with our vision and what we\u2019re trying to do,\u201d Mati Staniszewski, the tech company\u2019s CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t just excited by the tech \u2014 he understood what we\u2019re aiming to achieve creatively.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n In his own statement McConaughey said that he\u2019d been an investor in the company for several years and that it was \u201camazing\u201d to see how it\u2019s grown. \u201cWhat\u2019s remained constant is the extraordinary storytelling capabilities and creative potential that ElevenLabs unlocks \u2014 something that stood out to me from the start and that speaks to me as a professional storyteller,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n More details on McConaughey\u2019s investment or the terms of his voice deal were not publicly available. In response to a query from The Dallas Morning News, a representative for ElevenLabs pointed to the company\u2019s blog post about the partnership but declined to offer more details, adding that the company does not disclose \u201cinvestment size or ownership for anyone.\u201d <\/p>\n In an email to The News, a representative for McConaughey emphasized that the actor \u201cis using the technology to test ways to engage his audience, specifically in languages that he cannot speak fluently.\u201d <\/p>\n Along with McConaughey \u2014 whose distinctive, earthy drawl has served as a backdrop to everything from a series of Lincoln commercials to hit movies like Dallas Buyers Club and Dazed and Confused, the 1993 film that gave rise to his famous \u201cAlright, alright, alright\u201d catchphrase \u2014 on Tuesday ElevenLabs also announced a deal with the eminent British actor Michael Caine, whose native working-class Cockney accent offers a stark contrast to McConaughey\u2019s typically laid-back Texan vibe. <\/p>\n Actor Michael Caine lights a cigarette using a candle, circa 1970s. The image by late Dallas photographer Andy Hanson is from his archives held by the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University. <\/p>\n Andy Hanson Collection \/ DeGolyer Library, SMU<\/p>\n The AI startup \u2014 which early this year closed a funding round<\/a> at a valuation of $3.3 billion but more recently allowed employees to sell shares at double that valuation \u2014 already offers customers an array of tech-generated voices and other products, such as personal \u201cvoice cloning\u201d and \u201cvoice design\u201d features. <\/p>\n This week, the company also launched what it\u2019s calling its Iconic Voice Marketplace<\/a>, a platform that allows businesses to license the voices of well-known people \u2014 both living and dead \u2014 to create AI-generated content. The voices already available in that platform include those of Caine, John Wayne, Maya Angelou, Babe Ruth, Thomas Edison and Mark Twain, among others. McConaughey\u2019s voice is not part of the same marketplace. <\/p>\n Considering the recent rise of AI and its full-throated embrace by many celebrities, ElevenLabs\u2019 new features and audio deals don\u2019t exactly come as a surprise. But the company\u2019s flashy talent deals add to a broader debate over the proper role of the powerful technology in the entertainment industry. <\/p>\n Actor and University of Texas Minister of Culture Matthew McConaughey gets the Texas Longhorns crowd fired up before the Red River Rivalry against the Oklahoma Sooners at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in 2024.<\/p>\n Tom Fox \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n In recent years, as AI has proliferated into nearly every aspect of modern life, legions of entertainment industry workers, ranging from on-screen television actors to behind-the-camera visual effects workers, have grown increasingly worried about what some deem a potentially existential threat to their livelihoods. Various industry unions, including the Writer\u2019s Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, which represents over 150,000 actors and other industry workers, have lobbied heavily for more regulations, and in 2023 both groups enacted monthslong strikes largely over AI issues, eventually winning<\/a> major contract concessions. <\/p>\n But since then, the debate hasn\u2019t gone away. Last month, SAG-AFTRA\u2019s leadership issued a condemnation<\/a> of the newly popular AI-created actor known as Tilly Norwood; this week, a country song created by \u201cBreaking Rust\u201d \u2014 another AI artist \u2014 hit the top<\/a> of the Billboard sales chart for the first time, provoking new controversy. <\/p>\n The public embrace of the technology by McConaughey \u2014 a generally beloved Texan who has also been instrumental in growing the state\u2019s industry footprint \u2014 is likely to add even more fuel to an already raging cultural discourse. <\/p>\n \u201cI found it interesting, because this is such a volatile conversation, and people line up on it in a really polarized way,\u201d said David Stout, an artist and performer who teaches at the University of North Texas College of Music. <\/p>\n David Stout is a composer, visual artist and teacher working with emerging technologies at the University of North Texas.<\/p>\n Andy Jacobsohn \/ Staff Photographer<\/p>\n Stout \u2014 who said he uses AI as part of his own creative output and finds himself on the \u201cpro-AI\u201d side of the debate, because of its enormous creative potential \u2014 sees no problem with the famous actor\u2019s embrace of the voice cloning technology. \u201cHe agreed to it, and he doesn\u2019t mind that his voice is going to be everywhere.\u201d <\/p>\n But it\u2019s a very different scenario when performers\u2019 talents are utilized without their consent, he emphasized. It\u2019s a problem that\u2019s particularly damaging to less famous \u2014 and less financially successful \u2014 performers. <\/p>\n \u201cWhat I see is, the overall thing that\u2019s happening right now,\u201d Stout added, \u201cis that it\u2019s whoever has the most lawyers. So the big companies are throwing their weight around against the smaller companies, and at the very bottom are the indie artists. And they may be anti-AI or pro-AI \u2014 they may be utilizing AI \u2014 but in either case, they\u2019re the ones that get disenfranchised.\u201d <\/p>\n Parker emphasized that she\u2019s not criticizing famous actors who choose to make lucrative AI deals. \u201cThere is no shade against Matthew McConaughey,\u201d she said. \u201cI think he\u2019s great.\u201d <\/p>\n But the point is he\u2019s also a big star who has the clout and resources to retain control of his image and work out favorable business deals. Other actors \u2014 like her fellow Dallas performers \u2014 don\u2019t have those options, she said. <\/p>\n Dallas’ Tina Parker in a scene from AMC’s “Better Call Saul.”\n<\/p>\n Michele K. Short\/AMC\/Sony Pictur \/ Michele K.Short\/AMC\/Sony Picture<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s troubling to me,\u201d Parker added, \u201cbecause for the mid- to lower-range actors that aren\u2019t the A-list celebrities, what protections do they have?\u201d <\/p>\n A peek behind the curtains of some of North Texas\u2019 fanciest homes, and earnings from a big local builder and an international tech juggernaut.<\/p>\n Both iPhones and Android phones can be remotely erased if you need to wipe your information as a last resort.<\/p>\n The agency said airlines will only have to cancel 3% of their flights beginning at 6 a.m. Saturday instead of 6%. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Tuesday, dozens of cultural figures, tech luminaries and finance titans gathered for an inaugural summit held by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,59526,181,507,6778,236,1062,527,206,153476,74,12362],"class_list":{"0":"post-293252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-austin","13":"tag-celebrities","14":"tag-dallas","15":"tag-entrepreneurs","16":"tag-movies","17":"tag-performing-arts","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-theater"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dallas](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/PLYZZWO4RJELNPVJFSIV6IAJUY.jpg\")
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<\/a>Dallas-Fort Worth business datebook for the week of Nov. 16<\/a><\/p>\n![\"With](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/BGQNRTYNNRA2FPCPZUB6ZGOQLI.jpg\")
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<\/a>FAA takes first steps to restore flights after shutdown strain, but some limits remain<\/a><\/p>\n