One of the crucial attention-grabbing elements of “Roadrunner,” the Morgan Neville-directed documentary about Anthony Bourdain, was Neville’s use of generative AI to duplicate Bourdain’s voice.
Wanting again now, Neville instructed Wired that he noticed this as a “enjoyable” strategy to “hold [Bourdain’s] voice going within the movie.” However his method drew intense criticism — whereas the artificial Bourdain solely learn phrases that the true Bourdain had truly written, Neville mentioned many viewers assumed, “Oh, they only made [expletive] up.”
“Many individuals instructed me that there have been different documentary tasks that had been doing the identical factor, that each one reacted; they both modified what they had been doing or put big disclaimers over the whole lot,” he mentioned.
Since then, the director has “assiduously averted” utilizing AI. Even in his new documentary “Piece by Piece,” wherein he dramatizes musician Pharrell’s life with Legos (sure, actually), Neville was cautious to steer clear.
“Carl Sagan in [Piece by Piece] says, ‘Pharrell’ and I used to be very clear to everyone that we had been, with permission of his widow, going to make him say ‘Pharrell’ with out utilizing AI,” Neville mentioned. “We truly experimented to assemble the phrase from syllables [he actually said].”
