Documentary of late chef Anthony Bourdain uses AI to recreate his voice

The documentary appeared in cinemas in the US on Friday.

A new documentary about American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who died in 2018, includes an artificial intelligence version of the chef’s voice. The anecdote mentioned towards the end of the documentary – ‘Roadrunner’ – has received a lot of attention as the voice exactly matches with the late chef. The documentary appeared in cinemas in the US on Friday.

In a ‘New Yorker’ review of ‘Roadrunner’, reporter Helen Rosner describes a scene in the film in which artiste David Choe, a friend of Bourdain’s, reads an e-mail from the late chef, who died by suicide in 2018.

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The scene starts with Choe’s voice before transitioning to Bourdain’s, which says, “… and my life is sort of shit now. You are successful, and I am successful, and I’m wondering: Are you happy?”

‘Roadrunner’ filmmaker Morgan Neville said in the same interview with the ‘New Yorker’ that he used Bourdain’s voice from several sources, including TV, radio and podcasts. “There were three quotes there I wanted his voice for that there were no recordings of.” So, Neville gave a software company around 12 hours of recordings and “created an AI model of his voice”, he shared.

“If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what other lines were spoken by the AI, and you’re not going to know,” Neville told ‘New Yorker’ writer Helen Rosner.

However, the move has raised ethical concerns for some fans. To which the filmmaker said, “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”

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