While cartoon characters can stay youthful forever, their voice actors aren't quite so lucky. Homer Simpson, for example, sounds noticeably different today from his tone back whenThe Simpsonsfirst began in 1989. And Harry Shearer's Mr. Burns voice is actually beginning to match the character's 104 years of age.
OnSouth Park, despite the fact that Trey Parker and Matt Stone's voices are pitched up to play kid characters like Stan and Kyle, in the show's most recent season, they sound a tad more haggard than most 10-year-olds.
Would the show's creators ever consider swapping out their real voices for AI clones? Prior to his death, James Earl Jones made a deal that allowsfutureStar Warsprojects to digitally replicatehis iconic baritone voice. Oscar winners Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey similarlyjust signed over their voice rights to an AI company, who now have the ability to say "Alright, alright, alright" to just about anything.
The Simpsons' Hank Azaria, on the other hand, has been a vocal opponent of AI voices in animation. "I'd like to think that no matter how much an A.I. version of Moe or Snake or Chief Wiggum will sound like my voice, something will still be missing — the humanness,"Azaria wrote in aNew York Timesop-ed. "There's so much of who I am that goes into creating a voice. How can the computer conjure all that?"
Matt Stone doesn't seem too enthused about the idea, either. During a 2024 interview withBloomberg's Lucas Shaw, the journalist asked Stone if he and Parker had ever considered utilizing AI voice cloning. Stone revealed that some companies had already approached them about it, although he noted that he has some serious reservations about the technology, despite beingco-owner of a deepfake company.
"(My) first thought was 'I can think of 80 million things that I don't want that character to say,'" Stone admitted. "And so I don't know what those safeguards would be. But we haven't really looked into that."
Stone did concede that, should the singularity come to pass, he'll probably just retire and let computers take his job over for him. "When I'm 60 or 65 and I'm on my yacht and I don't want to do (South Park) anymore, I can have my AI assistant on my phone (do it), I guess," he speculated.
"You're tapping out at 60 to 65?" Shaw asked."I've got a yacht. I'm gonna go get on my yacht!" Stone joked. "I don't have a yacht by the way," he clarified. "Trey has a boat."
Unfortunately, for Parker and Stone, AI is already attempting to clone their voiceswhether they like it or not.
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