Celia Cruz Has Become the First Latina Artist to Have Her Voice Recreated by Artificial Intelligence

Celia Cruz, the Beloved Afro-Latina Icon, is Going to Appear on the U.S. Quarter belatina
Credit: Ibrahim Arce (Narcy Studios photographer), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Celia Cruz has been gone since 2003, but her voice is about to be heard again. The legendary Cuban singer, known across the world as the Queen of Salsa, has become the first Latina artist in history to have her voice recreated through artificial intelligence, a development announced by her estate representative Omer Pardillo and made possible through a partnership with ElevenLabs, the same company that previously recreated the voice of American poet Maya Angelou.

Pardillo was careful to frame the project in terms of what it will not allow rather than simply what it makes possible. The AI voice has been created and registered, but its use will be subject to strict supervision by the Cruz estate, with access limited to projects that align with the values she held and the culture she spent her life celebrating.

What the Technology Will and Will Not Be Used For

The estate’s vision for the AI voice centers on preservation and education rather than commercial novelty. Pardillo described potential applications including audiobook narration and educational content, with the condition that every use must remain faithful to Cruz’s actual words and beliefs. The priority language will be Spanish, reflecting the centrality of the Spanish-speaking world to everything Cruz represented, though Pardillo said he would consider limited English-language applications if they preserved her authenticity.

The decision to work with ElevenLabs came in part because of Pardillo’s personal connection to Maya Angelou, whom he had met through Cruz. Seeing how ElevenLabs handled Angelou’s voice helped dissolve his initial reservations about whether artificial intelligence could be trusted to treat Cruz’s legacy with the respect it demands.

He was explicit about the boundaries the estate intends to enforce. The AI voice will not be made broadly accessible for anyone to use freely. The process is deliberately limited, and any unauthorized use will be pursued through legal channels. Pardillo said his greatest fear had always been finding Cruz’s voice attached to a message or figure she never would have endorsed, and he described the current arrangement as one that prevents exactly that scenario.

The Responsibility of Keeping the Legacy of Celia Cruz Alive

ElevenLabs talent partnerships director Bridget Ferris described the collaboration as an effort to bring Cruz’s voice into a new chapter of technology in a way that is intentional and worthy of her extraordinary legacy. She said there is no voice like Celia Cruz’s, pointing to the energy, joy and cultural impact that made her singular during her lifetime and that the estate is now working to protect into the future.

Pardillo framed the entire project as a response to a generational challenge that many estates of deceased artists are beginning to confront. The question of how to make an artist’s legacy accessible to younger audiences without diluting it or surrendering control over how it is used is one that technology has made both more urgent and more complicated. His answer, at least for Celia Cruz, is a tightly controlled AI voice that can speak to new generations in her own words without ever straying into territory she would not have chosen for herself.

Cruz was born in Havana in 1925 and spent decades building a career that made her one of the most beloved and recognized voices in the history of Latin music. The estate’s decision to use artificial intelligence to extend that voice into the present is a measure of both how much she still matters to the cultures she celebrated and how seriously Pardillo takes the responsibility of speaking for her now that she can no longer speak for herself.

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