Marvel Legend Stan Lee to Be 'Resurrected' Through AI, With His Voice and Likeness Licensed for Commercial Use

The precocious Marvel comics fable Stan Lee volition person his dependable and likeness replicated by an AI institution for commercialized use, it's been announced.

AI audio institution ElevenLabs has acquired the rights to Lee's representation and dependable and intends to licence them for further usage by different companies, opening the doorway to a digitally-resurrected Lee appearing successful films and commercials.

ElevenLabs users volition besides beryllium capable to perceive a replication of Lee's dependable narrate audio books — including via a "Stan Lee Book Club of the Month" — and make a comic publication sheet featuring Lee from templates that see his likeness.

"Stan ever believed successful gathering his fans wherever they were: successful the pages of a comic, astatine a convention, oregon successful a speedy on-screen cameo," said Chaz Rainey, a lawyer and committee subordinate for Stan Lee Universe, the institution that presently owns Lee's image, per Variety.

"This concern is simply a mode of continuing that. Fans person ever told america that erstwhile they work his comics, they perceive the words successful Stan's voice, and now, acknowledgment to ElevenLabs, we tin marque that a reality."

This isn't the archetypal clip that Lee's dependable and representation person been replicated utilizing AI. Last year's Los Angeles Comic Con saw exertion institution Proto Hologram complaint betwixt $15 and $20 for a three-minute chat with Lee's AI likeness, to wide disapproval from fans.

The ineligible rights to Lee's representation stay a messy subject, with Stan Lee Universe present acceptable up arsenic a associated task involving Lee's ain institution POW! Entertainment. Shortly earlier his decease successful 2018, however, Lee besides attempted to writer POW! Entertainment, claiming the company's different chiefs conspired to "fraudulently steal" his sanction and likeness and payment financially astatine his expense.

Lee was 95 astatine the clip of this lawsuit, and by his ain admittance had suffered from precocious macular degeneration for respective years, a information that near him incapable to work unaided.

For ElevenLabs, Lee is conscionable different dependable added to its vault of surviving and deceased celebrities, which already includes Michael Caine, Matthew McConaughey, Judy Garland, David Hasselhoff and Albert Einstein. Caine antecedently said that ElevenLabs was "using innovation not to regenerate humanity, but to observe it... It's not astir replacing voices; it's astir amplifying them, opening doors for caller storytellers everywhere." The company's exertion was besides utilized to bring the precocious James Earl Jones' Darth Vader to Fortnite arsenic a chatty NPC.

Image credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You tin scope Tom astatine [email protected] oregon find him connected Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social