Deepfake voices quote the late chef for a documentary film

The documentary filmmakers behind the late chef Anthony Bourdain, who died in 2018, used artificial intelligence to voice his quotes. The New Yorker reports.

According to media reports, the quotes are taken from Bourdain’s letters that he never publicly voiced. One of them appears in the documentary’s trailer at 1:30.

The film’s director, Morgan Neville, explained details of producing the ambiguous segments. According to him, the team used stitched-together excerpts of Bourdain’s performances drawn from video, audio recordings, podcasts and audiobooks.

“But there were three quotes I would like to voice,” Neville said.

He contacted the software developer, provided them with several hours of recordings, and they created an AI voice model of the chef.

“If you watch the film, aside from the mentioned line, you are unlikely to guess which other phrases were spoken by artificial intelligence,” the director continued.

He added that he would later be willing to participate in a panel discussion on the ethics of using the voices of the dead in documentary films.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was released in wide release on July 16, 2021. The film will later be shown on the American television channel CNN, and then it will appear on the streaming service HBO Max.

In April, the CEO of the digital avatar developer Pinscreen said that the number of deepfakes on the internet doubles every six months.

On the anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death, the mental health advocacy group created a melody and lyrics for a Nirvana-style song with AI.

In January, Microsoft patented a technology that would enable creating a digital copy of any person or character.

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