Anthony Bourdain’s documentary ‘Roadrunner’ sparks bizarre ethics debate

In Anthony Bourdain’s new documentary Roadrunner, Bourdain tells its own story from beyond the grave, as the film uses clips of Bourdain’s voice from television and podcasts.

Certain moments in the film, however, contain line readings that were never spoken by Bourdain – they are the product of artificial intelligence, trained to mimic Bourdain, having absorbed “about a dozen hours of recordings.” , blending in perfectly with the actual storytelling.

This New Yorker article highlights an AI snippet reading one of Bourdain’s emails, sent to a friend, in which he admits to feeling miserable, despite his overwhelming success and fame. Roadrunner Director Morgan Neville has confirmed that there are multiple AI-generated lines in the film. Neville said:

“If you watch the movie, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what other lines that the AI ​​said, and you won’t know. We can have a documentary ethics panel on this later.

The article sparked a visceral backlash on Twitter, as users recoiled at the idea of ​​Bourdain’s voice being digitally recreated to tell his private correspondence to the public.

The AI ​​Bourdain, however, does not cross a new ethical frontier in entertainment; it is simply the latest example of a deeply troubling trend. Disney has dabbled in the dark arts of digital necromancy before, having recreated the likeness of Peter Cushing for Thief one, and awkwardly inserting Carrie Fisher into the The Rise of Skywalker after his death.

Tupac Shakur and Whitney Houston’s holograms “played” for the audience, while a hologram of Kim Kardashian’s late father expressed his enthusiastic approval of Kanye West, on behalf of West. Even James Dean is making a comeback in Hollywood decades after his death with help from CGI.

What makes Bourdain’s story so particularly disturbing is the fact that Bourdain committed suicide, as well as Bourdain’s alleged unease with his own fame. While the filmmakers would have received permission from the Bourdain estate before creating the AI, using it to tell what looks like a deeply personal email, as well as lines of speech Bourdain never said , seems to be a step too far.

Neville responded to Twitter’s reaction by telling Variety:

“There were a few sentences Tony wrote that he never said out loud. With the blessing of his real estate and literary agent, we used AI technology. It was a modern storytelling technique that I used in a few places where I felt it was important to bring Tony’s words to life.

With the increasing availability and persuasiveness of deepfake technology, expect to see more digital necromancy on the horizon. Despite Twitter’s backlash and public discomfort, the digital resurrection of the dead for entertainment and profit appears to be continuing, unchecked.