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AI Technology

An AI Model of Anthony Bourdain's Voice Says Lines He Never Uttered in New Documentary (inputmag.com) 61

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
A new documentary film has harnessed artificial intelligence to artificially voice quotes from its subject, the late Anthony Bourdain. From a report: Details of the dubious decision are outlined in a piece in The New Yorker, and raise a heap of uncomfortable questions about whether or not it's ethical to put words in the mouths of the deceased, whether or not they penned them during their life. The lines appear in filmmaker Morgan Neville's new documentary, Roadrunner, when an email from Bourdain is initially read by the recipient, but the audio then transitions into Bourdain's own voice.
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An AI Model of Anthony Bourdain's Voice Says Lines He Never Uttered in New Documentary More

An AI Model of Anthony Bourdain's Voice Says Lines He Never Uttered in New Documentary

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  • Some of me is disgusted, but I am forced to accept that even dead actors are more likable than the current crop.

    • I want to know why Anthony Bourdain's state-sponsored murder was covered up, not why they can make his voice say stupid shit

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        Whilst the circumstances do strike me as a bit suspicious, is there any evidence that he died by anything other than suicide?

  • Ghoulish (Score:3)

    by john83 ( 923470 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @01:07PM (#61585565)
    Any discussion of whether a person would or wouldn't have said the words being cast in their voice is secondary, I think, to how ghoulish this is. It's not much better than using animatronics to have his corpse wave for the camera. CGI reanimations of dead actors are already a thing: see e.g. Peter Cushing in Rogue One, and I felt much the same about that.

    • Not if one's using this tool for rewriting history. We put so much faith in "seeing* is believing" that anything that undermines that foundation should be suspect.

      *Applies to hearing as well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by OzPeter ( 195038 )

        Not if one's using this tool for rewriting history. We put so much faith in "seeing* is believing" that anything that undermines that foundation should be suspect.

        *Applies to hearing as well.

        Well that was dealt with a long time ago by his famous quote:

        Don't believe everything you read on the Internet just because there's a picture with a quote next to it.

        Albert Einstein

      • I always keep thinking, "You know, -- at some point, -- human beings are going to have to deal with abstraction."

        Most people kick and scream. "My GUT will tell me what's true!" ...

        Nope.

        Not gunna work.

        I don't see how that's going to work.

    • how do you feel about disney world's hall of presidents?
  • can just create their own sources to quote and use. No more anonymous sources needed to frame their own beliefs in their fake news propaganda.
  • In my not so humble opinion, there haven't been more than a handful of people of his calibre on any US TV show in the past decade. Miss you, man!

    • Not to be insensitive, but I'm curious if you can expand on why you miss him. To me he always seemed like a good writer trying to seem like a rock star who once used to cook. (Early in his career he was also an insufferable douche, but he softened a lot with age)

      • Because he kept it real. Like any true rock star.

        • Lost any respect I had for him when he killed himself having a young child. Selfish fucking prick. The guy had money, means, a decent life. Far better than many others. I can't even watch anything he did after that. Kept it real. You probably idolize Kurt Cobain too.

          • "What about my child" is a rational thought for rational people. Depression and desperation have no rationality, or morality for that matter. It's like being a junkie. You don't think, you just do. When your brain is screaming THE PAIN IS TOO MUCH, END IT NOW at you, you just do it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spun ( 1352 )

        Anthony Bourdain cared about the places he went and the people he met there. He did not act like a rock star, he was very humble. He could mix it up with both the "little people" as well as the rich and famous, and treated both the same. His caring soul and inquisitive mind shone through in his actions on camera.

        Yeah, he may have been a coked up douche-bro earlier on in his career but he grew out of it.

        • This ^^^^ so very much

          Also, Anthony called it as he saw it, and that got him murdered

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by spun ( 1352 )

            Uhhhh, murdered you say? Not something I've heard before, do you have any more to the story? Ideas about who did it or why?

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Another Clinton murder *nods* He pirated too much music and George Clinton got fed up and murdered him.

            • It's a whackjob Qanon theory that posts Bourdain was about to uncover a global child sex abuse cabal, known as the Pentaverate, consisting of the Queen, the Vatican, the Gettys, the Rothschilds, AND Colonel Sanders, before he went tits-up.

              Kidding about the Pentaverate, NOT kidding about the Qanon whackjobs.

            • As I remember it, Bourdain loved to go off on a certain political figure who liked to put katsup on well done steaks with his tiny, tiny little hands [cheatsheet.com]

              Between a real lack of coverage of his death, the body being destroyed immediately, the 'shame' of something that looked like suicide, his gal-pals various allegations beforehand and the qanon retards trying to spin in against the clintons... there is more stink there than there should be

              imo, Bourdain is as close to a Christ figure as America has produced, and

      • His opinion was always an interesting watch. Early on his show was about eating extreme food but then it became more philosophical later on.

        • I thought his broadcast from the inner city neighborhoods of Colombia was both brave and informative in ways that rarely make in to the news

      • To me he always seemed like a good writer trying to seem like a rock star who once used to cook.

        It's not like he was pretending to be something. He billed himself as a writer who wants to be a rockstar who used to cook. People just liked that.

  • This is uncanny valley territory. We've been putting voices to words since we've been able to reproduce recordings. Go to the Disney Hall of Presidents and you'll hear voices uttering lines that may have only existed in writing (so far as we know.) so this isn't new at all. Would it be different if it were just a sound-a-like voice actor? Probably not. This is perfectly okay as long as there is no deception, and that everyone is transparent about how the sounds were produced.

  • Just be honest and open about it! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Thursday July 15, 2021 @01:25PM (#61585649)

    Just so we know someone actually never said that, and this is a reproduction of their voice is clearly stated I don't see too much of an issue with it.

    Especially if it may be their voice reading a letter they had wrote, or a possible reenactment of something that happened, but the details may not be clear. But we need to know what is from the source and what is manufactured. Being that technology is getting so good at making it seem like it is from the source, we will now need to put some extra effort into informing the people what is happening.

    • Being that technology is getting so good at making it seem like it is from the source, we will now need to put some extra effort into informing the people what is happening.

      Or call in favors with "authoritative sources" and internet gate keepers to discredit and censor those who point out the deep fakes for what they are.

      'by any mean necessary' is the motto some people live by. Something will go 'viral' and no amount of debunking it will matter.

      The only possible silver lining for making it cheap to make deep fakes is that maybe people might stop and reconsider before taking something at face value.

    • Do you honestly believe people will just be honest about it? That would be relying on the honor system in a world where no one gives two shits about being honorable.

    • yeah. i don't really see anything wrong with this. I've seen plenty of say civil war documentaries where voice actors will read correspondence from the war. I've never felt like i was being tricked. i've never stopped and thought, "wait a minute! that guy never said that!"

      If i think about it, the actor has the ability to insert emotion into some text in such a way to convey meaning that actually wasn't there when Lincoln, or Sherman, or whatever guy on the front lines originally wrote the letter. Is that d

  • No Problem (Score:3)

    by Stolovaya ( 1019922 ) <skingiii.gmail@com> on Thursday July 15, 2021 @01:28PM (#61585659)

    I don't see any problem with it. This is simply a new, evolved form of art creation.

    I get the concern around propaganda and real fakes, but for things like this, it's fine. I think the people calling this "ghoulish" are just weird techno puritans. It's on the same level as those that thought getting your picture taken would steal their souls.

  • It worked for Brian Williams and Lester Holt.

  • "an email from Bourdain is initially read by the recipient, but the audio then transitions into Bourdain's own voice."

    OK, perhaps call the tech slightly weird, but this isn't exactly shoving horrific statements into the mouths of dead people when you're reading back their own written words.

    If Anthony were alive and you asked him to narrate the autobiography, no one would be discussing or questioning this. As long as a producer or director maintains a level of accuracy and honesty (as in directly quoting) then I don't foresee too much of a problem with this. Weird at first, but will likely be embraced by the rampant gree

  • He would have loathed the idea of his voice coming out of something artificial like that, and hated the idea that he became famous enough that his voice could be basically stolen and made to say whatever anybody else wanted.

  • There have been professional voice actors who can imitate a wide variety of speakers. Some of them even portray famous personalities. The lucky ones even look like the people they are imitating.

    Here, the subject's own words are being read. The only difference (and tenuous connection to Slashdot) is that it is a machine doing the reading instead of an actor who specializes in impersonations. And the only reason to use a machine is that impersonators want to get paid on scale.

  • ...when it finds out that his role-model committed suicide?

  • THEY can be replaced by "robots". AI is getting better, they can use artificial actors they create out of thin air, that demand NOTHING and turn them into stars. A win-win for the hollywood companies.
    • Nope. We've had 'music' generators & pretty sophisticated synthesizers for decades & yet we still need musicians to compose & play. Music tech can be useful but realistically, it's applications are limited & it's much easier to get creative with a bunch of talented musicians than trying to get computers to do it. If the music industry could make money out of music tech in this way, they would, but they can't. I can't see it being any different for acting - judging by how nuanced & intang
      • I know the linked articles claim that "A.I." was used, but it's just an adapted voice model. Calling that "AI" sounds like buzzword bullshit to me. Anthony Bourdain's statements were not invented by an AI, they were created by Bourdain himself, and then the film team typed the statements into the computer and the voice model rendered them.

        I agree with you that AI music sucks, but I don't think that's a good analogy to the fake Bourdain voice. I think a better analogy would be between a drummer and a d

        • I know the linked articles claim that "A.I." was used, but it's just an adapted voice model. Calling that "AI" sounds like buzzword bullshit to me. Anthony Bourdain's statements were not invented by an AI, they were created by Bourdain himself, and then the film team typed the statements into the computer and the voice model rendered them. I agree with you that AI music sucks, but I don't think that's a good analogy to the fake Bourdain voice. I think a better analogy would be between a drummer and a drum machine. Drum machines do replace drummers, but someone still has to program it. Likewise, fake actors don't have to be controlled by AI, and can instead be scripted and animated by writers and animators. With good enough rendering, actors can be replaced by fake actors.

          I think it depends on your idea of 'good' acting. An analogy for you:

          "One day machines will exceed human intelligence." -- Ray Kurzweil

          "Only if we meet them half-way." -- Dave Snowden

  • This would make a perfect tool for the Yes Men, who make public statements of policy changes or public apologies on behalf of corporations that are guilty of abuse & other wrong doings. Then the corporations have to come along & refute the apologetic messages & declare that they're not sorry for doing those heinous things. Works beautifully. Who would you have saying what?

  • It makes sense that the Tolkien estate with the copyright for his works passed down to the people he willed them to, but what happens with likeness and implying someone said something?

    Has the legal world made a judgment on who owns someone's likeness after they pass? If Johnny Depp dies tomorrow, would his will already of stipulated who owned his likeness and had ability to sell said likeness to the highest bidder? Does owning someone's likeness even grant you the ability to literally put words in their mou

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