Keitel Warns AI Clones Can't Replicate Emotion
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- Harvey Keitel is shooting a new film written by his wife, actor and director Daphna Kastner, describing it as 'guerrilla warfare' — not a Hollywood production but made in Hollywood with college students on crew
- Keitel appeared at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival for the third time to present a screening of Martin Scorsese's 'Mean Streets,' a festival he won a Crystal Globe at in 2004 and returned to in 2015 for Paolo Sorrentino's 'Youth'
- Keitel warned AI is 'danger in front of us,' pointing to Michael Caine's licensing of his voice to ElevenLabs for the Iconic Voice Marketplace, whose first project was an AI-narrated audiobook of Homer's 'The Odyssey'
- Keitel said ElevenLabs hit a 'problem' with the Caine audiobook: 'They used his voice, but there was no emotion in it. They couldn't reproduce Michael Caine's beauty,' arguing the tech 'can't reproduce their emotional life' even when replicating image and voice
- Keitel quoted his 'hero' Aristotle in closing: 'It takes more than words to change a culture. To change a person, it takes aesthetic force. The force of the arts,' arguing festivals matter more than ever because 'politics is a disaster' and 'religions are in conflict'
Why it matters: A veteran actor with co-presidency of the Actors Studio from 1995 to 2017 publicly questioning whether AI voice clones can capture performance — using ElevenLabs' marquee Michael Caine project as his case study — adds creative-industry weight to the debate over licensing digital replicas at the moment Hollywood unions and studios are still drawing the rules.
