If anyone could make the dark side sound good, it was James Earl Jones. The actor, who died on Monday At the age of 93, he has voiced Darth Vader in more than a dozen Star Wars properties, from A new hope to Star Tours. He made the Force sound sinister in a way that made it appealing. With his death, it seems all the power, gravitas, and respect he gave the character is gone.
It’s not. It’s in the hands of AI.
A few years ago, when Jones provided some lines of dialogue as Vader for The Rise of Skywalkerhad expressed interest in finishing his time as a Sith Lord, According to Vanity FairLucasfilm, needing a way to continue the character (and in particular to continue having a version of the character’s voice as it sounded in the early Star Wars films), turned to a Ukrainian company called Respeecher, which used artificial intelligence to recreate Vader’s voice based on Jones’s previous performances (the actor gave permission to use his archive to train the voice model).
Finally, Respeecher’s work, completed in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ended in Obi-Wan Kenobiand Vader’s performance, if any, in the future could now depend on his AI. (Representatives of Reporter and Lucasfilm did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment.)
Jones’s passing marks a pivotal moment in the future of AI-generated performances. During last year’s prolonged Hollywood actors strike, one of the main points of friction between the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and studios was whether or not studios needed to obtain permission to use a past performance to train AI models. SAG ultimately succeeded in getting a safeguard passed on the use of AI in recreating performances. Now the question is: How will this apply to Darth Vader?
It’s a particularly interesting question when it comes to voice acting in particular. Completely recreating the voices may seem more advanced than completely recreating the entire performances, but it also feels more moving.
When Paul McCartney used artificial intelligence to create a Beatles song from tapes recorded when the Fab Four were still alive, the results were disturbing. When OpenAI released a demo of its Sky voice assistant, Scarlett Johansson thought it sounded very similar to the voice she used in HisShe was “shocked, angry, and couldn’t believe” that the company “went after a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine.” OpenAI denied that she was the inspiration, but stopped the demonstration. Video game voice actors are on strike right now to gain protection for their vocal performances. Voices, it seems, are currently at their highest value.
Ultimately, what happens next with Darth Vader’s voice isn’t really a question of rights (Jones gave permission), but rather one of emotion. Will Lucasfilm or its parent company, Disney, want to produce future Star Wars series or films featuring the AI Vader after Jones’ death? Will people respond positively to them? With a character as iconic as Vader, should there come a time when fans let him go?
Of Audrey Hepburn selling Dove chocolates to tupac hologramPosthumous portrayals have been a part of pop culture for years. But unlike Audrey and Pac, Jones is on board with the plan — he’s apparently the first celebrity to have allowed his iconic presence to be recreated by AI before his death. What will likely decide how well the Vader AI is received is how it’s handled. A Darth Vader movie may not be as well-received as, say, a Force ghost cameo or a flashback. It will be a test to see how well the character is received now that the man behind him is gone.
