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Morgan Freeman has warned that using artificial intelligence (AI) to replicate a voice amounts to an act of “stealing”.
The award-winning actor, 89, is famous for his performance in the prison drama The Shawshank Redemption, a role which established him as one of cinema’s most recognisable narrators.
With technology used to mimic famous voices and generate deepfakes on the rise, Freeman suggested those targeted may need to turn to the law.
He told ITV News: “On the one hand, it’s pretty nice.
“On the other hand, it’s stealing. Get lawyers.”
The actor also went on to acknowledge the difficulty in finding out “where it originated” as deepfakes and AI-generated material continue to be produced.
Freeman, who has lent his voice to documentaries like March Of The Penguins, Life On Our Planet and Our Universe, previously admitted he was unhappy with AI trying to recreate his voice, and it is keeping his lawyers “very, very busy”.
“I’m a little PO’d, you know. I’m like any other actor: don’t mimic me with falseness,” Freeman told The Guardian.
“I don’t appreciate it, and I get paid for doing stuff like that, so if you’re gonna do it without me, you’re robbing me.”
Asked if this has already happened, the actor said his “lawyers have been very, very busy” and found “quite a few” cases.
Freeman has also been on a mission to save blues music and is a co-owner of blues club Ground Zero in Clarksdale, Mississippi, which he helped set up after two backpackers asked him where they could listen to blues in the area.
He recently produced an album alongside the British Chineke! Orchestra and said if they were to win a Grammy it would “spike my good feeling”.
Reflecting on the genre and his ambition to keep it alive, he said: “A lot of times that’s what makes a resurgence. You see it, you connect it, and it’s back.
“The blues itself is a lament. It’s pain. It’s the expression of loss and want.
“That’s the blues.”
He went on to call the success of the 2025 Academy-award-winning film Sinners, which used blues music to explore the supernatural horror film’s themes, as a “powerful moment”.
He added: “There are corners where it is nourished and sooner or later it’ll sprout, like now.”
During his career, Freeman won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Million Dollar Baby and is also known for roles in Driving Miss Daisy (1990) and Invictus (2009).
