James Earl Jones Signs Off on Using Recordings to Recreate Voice with AI

The next step is musicians. We&#x27;ll be seeing that very shortly.<p>It&#x27;ll be possible to make new music featuring Whitney Houston, Elvis, Chester Bennington, et al.<p>On orthogonal planes, we&#x27;ll see the rise of more virtual musicians with completely artificial voices (Gorillaz meets Hatsune Miku++) and voice correction for non-vocalists.<p>Source: I work on this tech and we&#x27;ll be launching something very soon in this space.

Voice synthesis is also useful for people like Val Kilmer. The tracheotomy he underwent to treat his throat cancer wrecked his voice. Voice synthesis based on his own voice helps him sound like himself again:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sonantic.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;helping-actor-val-kilmer-reclaim-his-voice" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sonantic.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;helping-actor-val-kilmer-reclai...</a>

Makes me wonder about copyright when it comes to voice synthesis via AI. Like legally speaking, did they &quot;need&quot; JEJ to sign off on this as opposed to just using his voice as training data?<p>In the near future, I imagine it&#x27;d be easy enough to take a snippet of audio and transfer a celebrity&#x27;s voice to it, similar to what we can already do to images using StyleGAN or something similar.<p>Exciting times ahead!

Looking forward to the JEJ Google Maps voice!

I wonder how much money was offered. Or even if Jones gets royalty&#x2F;&quot;performance&quot; fees everytime a movie uses his voice. I imagine old actors would put that licensing agreement in their wills, and their kids and grandkids would get to get to enjoy the earnings.

Star Wars: Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.<p>Also Star Wars: This.<p>I don&#x27;t find the idea of movies&#x2F;music produced this way appealing at all. Rather see something recast (or new stories told with new characters) versus seeing this done for the sake of safe nostalgia sales.<p>Perhaps if JEJ feels it is time to step away from the character upon reflection, Disney might do some reflecting as well.