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In a new documentary, Roadrunner, About the tragic life and death of Anthony Bourdain, there are a few lines of dialogue in Bourdain’s voice that he might never have said out loud.
Filmmaker Morgan Neville used AI technology to digitally recreate Anthony Bourdain’s voice and have the software synthesize the audio of three quotes from the late chef and TV host, Neville told the New Yorker.
The deep voice was discovered when the New YorkerHelen Rosner asked how the filmmaker got a snippet of Bourdain’s voice while reading an email he sent to a friend. Neville said he contacted an AI company and provided them with a dozen hours of Bourdain speeches.
“… and my life is kind of shit now.” You are successful, and I have succeeded, and I wonder: are you happy? Bourdain wrote in an email, and an AI algorithm then recounted an approximation of his voice.
You can hear the line in the documentary trailer linked below, just around 1:30 a.m. The generation of Bourdain’s voice by the algorithm is particularly audible when it says “and I succeed”.
Neville told Rosner that there were three lines of dialogue he wanted Bourdain’s voice to speak, but he couldn’t find the previous audio to chain or make it work otherwise.
There is no shortage of companies capable of performing this type of AI voice replication, and there is actually a growing industry of companies that can specifically generate voices for video game characters or allow you to clone your own voice.
But whether it’s ethical to clone a dead person’s voice and have them say things they didn’t record when they were alive is another question, and Neville doesn’t seem too concerned.
“We can have a documentary ethics panel on this later,” he told the New Yorker.
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