LOS ANGELES (AP) — Throughout his acting career For over 60 yearsJames Earl Jones’ voice has become an indelible part of his work as a performer.
Jones, who died Monday at age 93, played a reclusive author who returns to the limelight in the film “Field of Dreams” and a haughty king of a fictional country in “Coming to America.” On stage, he won two Tony Awards for his work in “The Great White Hope” and “Fences.” Work as a voice actor His regal authority as Mufasa in The Lion King and his commanding, deep voice as Darth Vader in Star Wars have cemented his status as a legendary actor among generations of fans.
However, one aspect of Jones’ career has come under scrutiny since his death: after he was no longer playing Darth Vader, he agreed to the use of artificial intelligence to recreate the role, via Skywalker Sound and a Ukrainian company. Respeecher uses AI This is to reprise Jones’ villainous role in “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” which will be released on Disney+ in 2022. Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in “The Mandalorian,” also had his voice “de-aged” using the respeaker.
Voice actors talk about their fears AI can reduce Or, technology could be used to replicate one move into many others without the person’s consent, resulting in lost work opportunities. This concern led the Screen Actors Guild, a non-profit organization that represents video game performers, to file a lawsuit against the company. Go on strike Late July.
While some say Jones’ decision to have an AI recreate her voice calls into question the art of voice acting, it could also help lay the groundwork for transparent AI contracts that pay actors fairly for their work, with their consent. Zeke Alton, a voice actor and member of SAG-AFTRA’s Interactive Media Contract Negotiating Committee, said it was “amazing” that Jones was involved in the process of recreating her voice.
“If game and movie companies gave all actors the same consent and transparency of compensation that they gave James Earl Jones, we wouldn’t be going on strike,” Alton said. “It proves that they can do strikes. They just don’t want to go on strike for people who they feel don’t have the power to negotiate for themselves.”
Hollywood video game performers have announced their second strike in a decade after more than 18 months of negotiations with the games industry’s biggest companies over a new interactive media deal collapsed. artificial intelligence Protection. Union members say they’re not against AI, but performers worry the technology will give studios a way to take away their jobs.
The movie studio Fueled by AI Last year, labor unions staged a four-month strike in the film and television industry.
Jones, who overcame a childhood stutter, said in a previous interview, “I was happy to be able to speak because there was a period when I couldn’t speak.” His goal, he said, was to make his voice clearer. He told The Associated Press in 1994 that he tried to make Darth Vader “more human, more interesting.” But Star Wars director George Lucas advised him to “go back to a very narrow range of expression,” because the villain’s mechanical body would make it difficult for him to speak in a more human way.
Neither Skywalker Sound nor ReSpeaker responded to requests for comment, but a sound editor at Skywalker Sound told Vanity Fair that Jones approved the use of archival recordings to keep Darth Vader alive and acted as a “benevolent godfather” to guide the character’s performance in the Disney+ show.
Voice actor Brock Powell said having a voice actor like Jones available permanently could eliminate the need for actors who specialize in voice matching, which they said provides steady work for many actors who can recreate famous voices in video games, animated series and other media.
“To quote Jurassic Park, scientists were so focused on whether they could do it that they never stopped to ask whether they should do it,” Powell said.
The use of this type of AI could also reduce “originality” in acting, as there may be no opportunity for new actors to step in and reinvigorate a role, the researchers said.
Actor Crispin Freeman, who worked on voice-matching to recreate Orlando Bloom’s voice in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” said that while the technology may take away voice-matching roles, it won’t hinder “the ability for future artists to carve their own path” with new roles.
“As we move forward, we need to constantly be creating new stories, rather than relying on old ones,” he said. “Rather than worrying, ‘Oh, can someone else be Darth Vader?’ Why not create a new Star Wars character that’s as compelling as Darth Vader?”
Jones’ contract could be a good example of how to properly negotiate publicity rights with actors, said Sarah Elmaleh, chair of SAG-AFTRA’s two-way negotiations committee. Elmaleh, who is also a voice actor, said such tools could be used to make “meaningful, smart artistic decisions.”
“I worry about a world that confuses the superficial nature of the human voice with performance,” she says, “and there’s no escaping the metaphor that’s embedded in the character itself, which is that when you confuse the human with the machine, you become an instrument of other forces, other powers.”
Voice actor Alton said he wondered what it would mean if Jones’ use of Darth Vader’s voice was used for the next 100 years and people didn’t remember “all the different things that made him the iconic character that he is.”
“At that point, it’s just a disembodied voice. This is part of the potential disempowerment of art with generative AI, and it’s kind of a difficult subject, but it’s really important that we, as a world, think about what we want entertainment and art to be in the future,” he said. “Do we want it to be human or do we want it to be bland?”
