Mr. Potato Head, Optimus Prime and Mr. Monopoly are uniting — in the world of AI.
AI audio startup ElevenLabs has partnered with Hasbro to bring a collection of the toy and game company’s suite of characters, including some from Transformers, the board games Monopoly and Clue, Mr. Potato Head and to its Iconic Marketplace, its collection of celebrity voices and likenesses that companies can license for commercial use. Some of the characters were available as of Wednesday, while others, including Mr. Monopoly and Optimus Prime, will be available soon.
The move is a partnership between ElevenLabs and Hasbro’s AI Studio, which is overseen by CEO Bertie Thomson. Thomson and Dustin Blank, ElevenLabs’ head of partnerships, revealed the news at Axios’ AI+NY event in New York — alongside demos of the AI versions of Peppa Pig and “G.I. Joe” character Cobra Commander. (Peppa Pig is currently only available in demo mode.)
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“We’ve approached this with very detailed and robust asset guardrails, so starting right from the whole direction of the character itself,” Thomson said, who called the licensing model “behavioral licensing.”
“You have so many brand-new atmospheres and opportunities where their characters can be dynamic and interactive,” Thomson added, suggesting AI-backed voices for the characters’ appearances at theme parks.
Many of the characters’ original voices, such as Peter Cullen’s portrayal of Optimus Prime or Frank Welker’s of Megatron, have remained, while voice actors were cast for characters without voices, such as those from Clue.
“This partnership is really the first of its kind, where businesses of all kinds can now come to ElevenLabs and they can request to license these iconic characters from Hasbro today,” Black said. “It really sets the stage for the future of licensing.”
The news reflects the continued interest by entertainment companies in finding new revenue streams for their intellectual property through AI, months after Disney’s sweeping licensing deal to license its characters for OpenAI’s Sora platform collapsed upon Sora’s closure.
The news comes a week after ElevenLabs added Marvel legend Stan Lee’s voice and likeness to its platform, with the Iron Man and Spider-Man co-creator joining the likes of Matthew McConaughey, Michael Caine, Judy Garland, David Hasselhoff and Albert Einstein. “This partnership is a way of continuing that. Fans have always told us that when they read his comics, they hear the words in Stan’s voice, and now, thanks to ElevenLabs, we can make that a reality,” Chaz Rainey, a lawyer and board member for Stan Lee Universe, said in a statement last week.
ElevenLabs raised $500 million in a Series D funding round earlier this year at an $11 billion valuation — five months after the company, which launched in 2022, offered employees a $100 million tender offer at a $6.6 billion valuation.