Character Casting

Character Casting is a feature that lets you upload an entire audiobook manuscript, and it automatically picks out the characters and assigns a suitable voice to each one. Think of it as an AI doing what a theater director does when reading a script and casting the right actor for each role.

When you upload a manuscript, a few candidate voices show up for each character. It doesn't lock in the choice right away — instead, it reads actual lines from the script in that voice so you can preview it first. If you don't like what you hear, you can swap in a different candidate. This isn't really about generating brand-new voices; it's more about selecting and assigning the right voice for each character from voices that already exist.

It's a feature used within ElevenLabs' creative production tools for making audiobooks, letting a single person produce a multi-character audiobook without having to hire multiple voice actors.

The article introduces it by saying, "upload an entire audiobook manuscript, and the AI picks out the characters and assigns voices on its own." The key point to note is that the AI isn't improvising voices on the fly. It proposes candidate voices suited to each character, and the user previews them with actual dialogue before making the final choice themselves — so the final decision rests with a human.

Prepare the manuscript text you want to turn into an audiobook. Upload it to ElevenLabs' audiobook production feature. Play through the suggested voice candidates for each character one by one, and pick and confirm the voice that sounds most natural reading the actual lines.