[NEWS] James Earl Jones gave permission for AI voice recreations

    James Earl Jones' Darth Vader Has Already Been Immortalized With AI
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    James Earl Jones died Monday at the age of 93. But long before he
    did, he gave Lucasfilm permission to recreate his iconic Darth
    Vader voice for shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi.
    If anyone could make the Dark Side sound good, it was James Earl
    Jones. The actor, who died Monday at the age of 93, provided the
    voice for Darth Vader in more than a dozen Star Wars properties,
    from A New Hope to Star Tours. He made the Force sound ominous in a
    way that made it appealing. With his passing, it feels as though all
    the power and gravitas and respect he brought to the character is
    gone.
    It's not. It's in the hands of AI.
    A few years ago, when Jones provided a few lines of dialog as Vader
    for The Rise of Skywalker, he'd expressed interest in wrapping up
    his time as the Sith Lord, according to Vanity Fair. Lucasfilm, in
    need of a way to continue the character - and particular to
    continue having a version of the character's voice as it sounded in
    those early Star Wars movies - turned to a Ukrainian company called
    Respeecher that used artificial intelligence to make a recreation of
    the Vader voice based on Jones' past performances. (The actor signed
    off on the use of his archive to train the speech model.)
    Ultimately, Respeecher's work, completed amidst Russia's invasion of
    Ukraine, ended up in Obi-Wan Kenobi, and what, if any, Vader
    performance that comes in the future could now depend on its AI.
    (Reps for Respeecher and Lucasfilm did not immediately return emails
    seeking comment.)
    Jones' passing marks a pivotal moment in the future of AI-generated
    performances. During last year's prolonged Hollywood actors' strike,
    one of the biggest sticking points between the Screen Actors
    Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or
    SAG-AFTRA, and the studios was whether or not studios needed to
    secure permission to use a past performance to train AI models.
    Ultimately, SAG won guardrails around the use of AI in recreating
    performances. Now the question is: How will those play out with
    Darth Vader?
    It's a particularly interesting question when it comes to voice
    acting specifically. The full recreation of vocals may feel further
    along than the full recreation of whole performances, but they also
    feel more poignant.
    When Paul McCartney used AI to help fashion a Beatles song from
    tapes made when the Fab Four were still alive, the results felt
    haunted. When OpenAI released a demo of its voice assistant Sky and
    Scarlett Johansson believed it sounded much like the voice she used
    in Her, she was "shocked, angered, and in disbelief" that the
    company "would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to
    mine." OpenAI denied she was the inspiration but paused the demo.
    Video game voice actors are on strike right now to get protections
    for their vocal performances. Voices, it seems, are currently at
    their highest value.
    Ultimately, what will now happen to the Darth Vader voice is not
    really a question of rights-Jones gave permission - but rather one
    of emotion. Will Lucasfilm, or its parent company Disney, want to
    produce future Star Wars shows or movies featuring AI Vader
    following Jones' death? Will people respond positively to them?
    With a character as iconic as Vader, should there be a point at
    which fans let go?
    From Audrey Hepburn selling Dove chocolates to hologram Tupac,
    posthumous performances have been a part of pop culture for years.
    But unlike Audrey and Pac, Jones is in on the plan; he is
    seemingly the first celebrity to have allowed his iconic presence
    to be recreated with AI before his passing. What will likely
    decide how well AI Vader goes over is how it's handled. A Darth
    Vader feature film may not be as warmly received as, say, a Force
    ghost cameo or a flashback. It'll be a test to see how welcomed
    the character will be now that the man behind it is gone.
    https://www.wired.com/story/james-earl-jones-darth-vader-death-artificial-intelligence/>