Morgan Neville, director of Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain has revealed that he used A.I. software to recreate the late chef’s voice in the documentary.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Neville was asked about how he was able to obtain recordings of Bourdain’s voice, specifically a recording where Bourdain is heard reading his own e-mail in one segment of the documentary.
Over the course of the film, Bourdain’s voice is used to narrate the film at times, including from radio recordings, podcasts, TV and and the like.
But the e-mail recording? Peculiar.
When asked how it was possible for Neville to have this recording in the doco, he said, “There were three quotes there I wanted his voice for that there were no recordings of.”
So what did he do? He contacted an A.I software company and supplied them with approximately 12 hours of Bourdain’s voice, through this they were able to create “an A.I. model of his voice”.
Neville added, “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the A.I., and you’re not going to know.”
Did this raise alarm bells from an ethical point of views? Yes, with many divided opinions seen here on this Twitter thread.
In an interview with GQ, Neville revealed that he seeked approval before going ahead with the deepfake voice.
“I checked, you know, with his widow and his literary executor, just to make sure people were cool with that. And they were like, Tony would have been cool with that. I wasn’t putting words into his mouth. I was just trying to make them come alive.”
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Watch the trailer for ‘Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain’:
