A March 2026 survey of 1,523 Americans by AI platform Machined.ai asked respondents to select their dream celebrity voice for AI assistants. The landslide winner was Morgan Freeman, who captured 27.2% of the vote and carried 13 states. However, Freeman has made his stance clear, telling CBS Mornings, “I got lawyers,” noting his ongoing legal battles against unauthorized AI replicas of his voice. Three of America’s top five choices have publicly opposed unauthorized voice replication: Freeman (27.2%), Scarlett Johansson (14.4%), who accused OpenAI of replicating her voice after she turned down the role, and David Attenborough (8.2%), who labeled AI voice cloning “profoundly disturbing.” Tom Hanks (12.8%) swept eight states. The study also assigned celebrity voices to specialized AI roles, with Gordon Ramsay winning the cooking instructor category at 34.7%, Samuel L. Jackson as workout motivator at 26.8%, and David Attenborough as GPS navigator at 28.4%. Tech giants like ElevenLabs and Meta are chasing celebrity AI deals, while ElevenLabs launched a consent-based “Iconic Voice Marketplace” and Amazon retired its celebrity Alexa add-ons due to complex rights management.