The voice of Darth Vader, the villain of Star Wars, will no longer be the original one of actor James Earl Jones, but his artificial replica. It will be the Ukrainian start-up Reespeecher to guarantee voice cloning thanks to the use of algorithms.
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James Earl Jones, at the age of 91, has decided to take a step back, giving up his role, but has nevertheless assured that the character of the science fiction saga, created by George Lucas, (in English Lord or Darth Vader) will be able to continue speaking in his artificially reproduced voice. The agreement with Respeecher provides for the use of audio recordings of the actor which with the help of speech-to-speech technology will be reworked to produce a speech for texts of new films or scripts, indistinguishable from the original.
The method used by the Ukrainian start-up, working solely on the vocal source, unlike the text-to-speech synthesis that starts from the text, is able to capture every verbal emotional nuance in order to generate a more natural effect in the cloned voice. Usually, 1 or 2 hours of recorded audio material is enough to allow the learning of artificial intelligence software.
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Respeecher’s team, despite the difficulties due to the war in Ukraine, managed to start a collaboration with Lucasfilm and Disney + to synthetically recreate the voice of a young Luke Skywalker in the series The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
In this case, as explained in a press release posted on the company website, a wider repertoire of interviews, clips and radio interventions was used to digitally reproduce the voice of actor Mark Hamill, interpreter of the most famous Star Wars character. The reconstruction, despite its artificiality, is so faithful to the original that no one has been able to notice any differences – underlines Jon Favreau, producer and creator of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
Based on the skills demonstrated and the quality of the results achieved, it was also possible to subsequently obtain the assignment for the cloning of the voice of Darth Vader in the TV series Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The Respeecher system, which can be implemented for real-time use, tries to meet the needs of the star system personalities interested in participating in multiple projects, re-entering an emerging sector of artificial intelligence application, that of synthesis. vocal, which reaches ever greater heights of perfection.
In this field, apps and platforms are multiplying, such as Voicemod, Veritone, Descript and Resemble AI that make available to celebrities and creators, but also to normal users, tools with easy access to voice cloning. With all the consequent advantages of favoring a profitable market and innovation (as in dubbing) and with all the risks of facilitating the spread of deepfake for malicious purposes. A threat the latter of which the founders of Respeecher are aware by assuming in a code of ethics, exposed publicly, the commitment not to allow the misleading and fraudulent use of their software and the use of artificial voice in case of abuse and dangers. of privacy violation.