Rhett & Link

Rhett McLaughlin (born 1977) and Link Neal (born 1978) are childhood best friends from North Carolina who became one of the internet’s most durable acts. Their daily talk show Good Mythical Morning has run since 2012 and made their studio, Mythical Entertainment, a creator-economy institution spanning podcasts (Ear Biscuits), scripted series, and food and lifestyle brands.

Cloning their own voices — on purpose

In September 2021 — a year before ChatGPT made generative AI a household argument — Mythical partnered with Veritone’s MARVEL.ai to create, manage, license, and monetize hyper-realistic synthetic versions of Rhett and Link’s voices. The stated goals were localization of their shows into other languages and new licensed content channels; Rhett quipped that he could not wait to hear his own synthetic voice speaking French. It made them among the first major creators to treat voice cloning as an owned, consented asset rather than a threat.

AI has also been a recurring bit on the show itself. In “Can We Outsmart A.I. (Artificial Intelligence)?” (January 2021) they pitted their own writing against a text generator; in “Craziest Food Made By A.I.” (March 2023) they cooked and ate whatever the model invented, marshmallow-salami sandwiches included. The tone is curiosity and comedy, not alarm — AI as the latest strange thing worth testing on camera.

Their approach models the consent-and-licensing path through the synthetic-media debate: the clone exists because they built it, they control it, and they profit from it — the arrangement voice actors and unions have been demanding, arrived at voluntarily and early.