I'd love to see The Simpsons do that with Phil Hartman.

Imho, that show died a little with the loss of Phil.

Haven't you answered your own question with the James Earl Jones example?

They could, yes.

I think they could but it won’t be natural

Agree hasn’t felt the same

Heck, I died a little with the loss of Phil and I was only a NewsRadio fan. He was.... exceptional.

I'm from the UK so I didn't see/hear him in anything else apart from The Simpsons, but his voice is so engrained in my memory. It makes me want to believe everything he says.. - which is probably why he was cast as a lawyer and an actor/salesman

Eventually, yes, but not quite yet.

Yes.

All actors are in danger, because actors are an expense. And as franchises get stronger, they are an expense that is no longer vital.

You don't have to pay an engineer tens of millions to appear on screen. You can pay them peanuts to generate a replacement.

Yes, we have that technology right now. AI models available today are not as innovative as a human voice actor, but they do a good job of duplicating a basic range of emotions in the actor's cadence.

The question isn't whether we can, but whether the actor's family can sue for using their voice. Right now, performers' rights legislation only protects content made by the actor themselves and does not protect against AI voice duplication. In the coming years, there will undoubtedly be a few legal cases on this subject, but ultimately it may have to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

are they licensed to do so? the technology isn't really relevant.

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>James Earl Jones' voice was AI-generated in Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+

who owns Darth Vader (the identity).

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Yeah. Like, I'm pretty sure JEJ gave them permission to recreate his voice. And even so, it's not like it's a hard voice to recreate. They got a different guy to voice him in Fallen Order, for example. But because of the sound mixing and such involved in making Vader's voice all robotic and deep, you can hardly tell the difference.

The thing is, too, as stuff like this gets more commonplace and shittier, we're going to lose the ear to tell the difference.

What I mean is, CGI can be incredible and flawless and indistinguishable, like it was for a while as the art of it was being showcased; or it can be Marvel's crunched out fast food junk, which is now the standard.

When AI voice work becomes commonplace, it'll get reduced to the same lifeless kind of mass production product as that, something that's as cheap and easy and standard to produce as possible, and we'll all get used to hearing voiceovers in that range. And the reality is, no matter how advanced it gets, AI is never going to come up with stuff like Mark Hamill's Joker out of the blue.

AI is getting crazy, I wouldn't be surprised if eventually they are able to do so, and personally I wouldn't mind if the alternative is a worse recast.

Also, Disney got into trouble in the past because when they made TailSpin, Baloo's voice actor was so close to the original Jungle Book actor that the family sued for royalties. It's why the show never lasted more than a season.

We're not going to lose the ear to the difference. We're just going to get worse products for awhile until demand breaks up stagnation again.

Star Wars is doing it with actors that are still alive and it's getting more and more convincing. Darth Vader in Kenobi was spot on JEJ.