We don’t know what is scarier about Darth Vader: his imposing armor, his two meters tall, his cavernous voice, or his ragged breathing.
In 1977, Darth Vader, the Star Wars villain, caused a media stir with his samurai-inspired armor and deep, metallic voice. 45 years after that voicethat of james earl jonesput down your paper. But he will not be replaced by another actor, but by an artificial intelligence.
The legendary actor James Earl Jones gave his voice for the last time to Darth Vader in the movie Star Wars Episode I: The Rise of Skywalker. At 91, he told Lucasfilm his intention to leave the character.
Nevertheless Darth Vader has appeared, with some dialogue, in the Disney+ Obi-Wan series. And he is the voice of James Earl Jones… or not. Actually, it is his voice generated from scratch by an artificial intelligence.
According to Vanity Fair, with the retirement of James Earl Jones, Lucasfilm considered hiring another actor to replace him. Something that, by the way, has had to be done with dubbing in Spain, after the death of long-awaited actor and presenter Constantino Romero.
But then Lucasfilm discovered the work of the Ukrainian company respectspecialized in create new dialogues from original voices, using artificial intelligence.
There are many companies that do this, you can even hire a service that records phrases for your mobile’s answering machine, using the voice of a celebrity. You can see it in this video:
However, what convinced Lucasfilm is the manual tone and the “human” touch that Respeecher achieved with his recreations. They were the ones who created the voice of young Skywalker in The Book of Boba Fett.
So Lucasfilm asked permission to james earl jones to use his hundreds of Darth Vader audio files recorded over five different decades, so that Respeecher could train the AI. With this database, this artificial intelligence can recreate any dialogue with the voice of James Earl Jones.
The job was not easy. Reseecher had to complete Darth Vader dialogues under the bombs of the Russian artillery. With some of the staff drafted into the army and his families out of the country as refugees, Bogdan Belyaev and his team completed their work for the Obi Wan Kenobi series.
All the Star Wars series on Disney +, ordered according to their score
Lucasfilm considered deferring its work with respect, because they did not want to endanger his life. But the Ukrainian start-up refused to give it up: “We are going to work, we are going to work in the face of this adversity, we are going to persevere“.
As Bogdan Belyaev explains in Vanity Fair, all of them have been Star Wars fans since childhood, and this was their life’s work. On the other hand they needed the money for their families, and to contribute to the Ukrainian economy in times of war.
It may be controversial that the voice of James Earl Jones with Darth Vader in starwars will be replaced by an artificial intelligence, rather than by another human actor. But at the end of the day Darth Vader is an almost artificial character. So it makes sense that, in the end, his voice is being recreated by an AI. And this is just the beginning…
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism