News Review - James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader Has Already Been Immortalized With AI

James Earl Jones, the prolific film actor whose baritone was widely known as the voice of “Star Wars” villain Darth Vadar passed away this morning at the age of 93. May he rest in peace. However, his iconic Darth Vader voice is likely to be immortal, for he had already permitted Lucasfilm to recreate his voice for shows Obi-Wan Kenobi and perhaps future Star Wars movies.

Though I’ve never fully experienced the phenomenal Star Wars era as a “Gen-Z”, I can fully empathize with the fans’ nostalgia toward such an iconic character – they want their favorite character to continue to exist and simply don’t want to let go. I’ve mourned when Tony Stark did his finger snap after his punchline “and I am Iron Man”, and then cried out with excitement when I saw the Wolverine pulling his claws out again on the new Deadpool movie after completely disappearing from the screen for seven years. We hope our favorite characters exist forever. It’s our natural wish.

However, the fans’ strong affection towards classic characters can never justify the companies’ abuse of generative AI, especially for profitable purposes. A successful fictional character is co-created by a marvelous original story, a spectacular performance by the actor, and the shared memories of the fans. It’s the voice actors’ flesh-and-bone nature that infuses a fictional character with soul, through empathizing with the character as a human being and improvising, putting their thoughts and emotions into acting, rather than reading the lines out loud with zero compassion or merely mimicking the “presumed” emotional voices, just like the ChatGPT saying comforting words not because it indeed feels something – it just combines the words in a way that best fits its probabilistic model.

Even if some brilliant AI technicians fine-tuned the voice model to make it sound like the past actor someday, I still doubt the worth of it. As the proverb goes, “There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes”, we can always hire new actors to interpret the same character in their preferred way instead of sticking to the past’s glory. For instance, Superman, or Agent 007 was performed by different actors throughout decades, and all of them have become the shared memories of fans of different ages. With each actor’s interpretation, the original characters got the chance to accompany the growth of the kids from generation to generation, avoided being washed out by merciless time, and became even more multi-faceted. Therefore, I believe it’s time to let go and, may Jones’ Darth Vadar rest in peace.

News Link: https://www.wired.com/story/james-earl-jones-darth-vader-death-artificial-intelligence/

Image source: Wired.com