Legendary American actor James Earl Jones is stepping down from his prominent role of Darth Vader – after 45 years of playing the part and will hand over the rights of its voice that will be replaced by artificial intelligence. This means that the best voice in cinema is now an AI.
At 91 years old, Jones hopes the artificial intelligence will ‘keep Vader alive.’
The AI re-creation of Vader’s voice can be heard in the recently released Disney+ Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries. Seeing that Ukrainian-based voice cloning company Respeecher did this during the Russian invasion is a momentous feat for them.
It is reported that Some of Jones’s old voice recordings were also used.
For future Star Wars projects, Jones permitted Disney and Lucasfilm to use artificial intelligence and archival recordings to recreate his iconic voice.
Jones voiced Darth Vader in the original Star Wars film back in 1977 and then in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
James has also reprised the role in films like the first installment of the Star Wars anthology series, Rogue One, and the third installment of the sequel trilogy, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
