An 'A.I. model' of Anthony Bourdain's voice says lines he never uttered in new documentary
“We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later,” said director Morgan Neville.
www.inputmag.com
So, to make a long story short, there's a documentary about the life of the late Anthony Bourdain. In part of the documentary, there is an email that is initially read out by the recipient, but segues into Bourdain's voice. The issue? Bourdain didn't actually say those words aloud. Instead, the documentary maker created an AI model of his voice and had that model "read" the words in Bourdain's voice.
This really strikes an uncomfortable feel for me. It's basically paving the way to have literally anyone say anything in their voice, and the fact that it is being used in a documentary makes that worse. Sure, here it is apparently just being used as a way to have Bourdain "voice" his thoughts, but the reaction of the filmmaker seems a bit disingenuous, saying "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. We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”
