Anthony Bourdain’s documentary used AI to simulate his voice

A new documentary on the late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain used artificial intelligence to recreate his voice, sparking debate on the ethics of the practice.

In one interview with The New Yorker, Morgan Neville, the director of “Roadrunner: a film about Anthony Bourdain“said he used AI to create a voiceover of Bourdain reading an email he wrote.

“My life is kind of shit now,” said Bourdain’s voice in the film, reading an email Bourdain wrote to his friend David Choe. “You are successful and I have succeeded and I ask myself: are you happy? “

Bourdain, who hosted CNN‘s “Unknown parts”, deceased by suicide in 2018 at age 61.

Neville told The New Yorker that he sent a software company hours of recordings of Bourdain’s voice, from television, podcasts and other media, to create an AI version of his voice. He used this to get Bourdain’s “deepfake” voice to express three quotes in the film that the late chef and TV host had never said aloud.

Some people raised concerns on social media about ethics to use an artificially recreated voice and not tell viewers it – to portray Bourdain speaking things out loud that he has never done in real life.

Neville noted in his interview that the voiceover is so smooth that “you probably don’t know what other lines the AI ​​has spoken, and you won’t.” The filmmaker added, “We can have a documentary ethics panel on this later.”

After a backlash online, the director tell GQ that he checked with Bourdain’s widow and executor for his recreation of the voice, “just to make sure people were cool with that; and they were like, Tony would have been cool with that.

Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, who was separated from Bourdain in 2016, tweeted in response: “I was definitely NOT the one who said Tony would have been cool with this.” Bourdain was dating actress Asia Argento when she died. It’s unclear who Neville was referring to when he said he spoke to his widow.

Representatives for Neville did not immediately return HuffPost’s request for comment.