Some Star Wars fans are just realising that the voice of Darth Vader was recast several years ago.
That’s right. If you didn’t know, James Earl Jones, who voiced Darth Vader for over 40 years hung up his cloak a while back and retired from voicing the villain.
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Perhaps most interestingly, Jones signed an agreement with Lucasfilm and Disney allowing them to use archive recordings and even AI in order to carry on his legacy.
This was mentioned on Reddit by a fan who wasn’t aware and one user, bolanrox, pointed out that the recordings were used in Obi-Wan.
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Other Star Wars fans began discussing the ethical use of AI in this instance including user miliardoK who said, “The person the model is based off gave consent for their likeness to be reused. Possibly even limited to ‘only use my voice for Vader and see to it my descendents receive royalties for my likeness being used.’”
Many in the Reddit thread see this as a positive use of AI.
Given that James Earl Jones is over 90 years old now, it’s understandable why he would want to retire, but he had the foresight to know that Vader is a character that will never leave the spotlight.
Of course it helps that Vader’s voice isn’t exactly human, so AI can produce it well, as pointed out by MyHusbandIsGayImNot, “AI generally does a really bad job at capturing cadence, but Vader is actually fairly flat so it's able to do it well.”
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So, if you weren’t aware of this change, now you are. James Earl Jones was originally brought on to voice Darth Vader due to the original actor, David Prowse’s, voice being distinctly British. From Yorkshire, to be precise.
It wasn’t deemed scary, which is fair, to be honest, and Jones was cast for his deep baritone voice instead.