Filmmaker Used AI Voice Cloning for Bourdain Documentary Quotes
Morgan Neville's latest documentary, 'Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,' which opened in theaters today, includes three lines spoken by the late chef and television host that were not part of any existing recording. To bring those words to the screen, Neville turned to artificial intelligence, creating a digital replica of Bourdain's voice.
Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018, left behind a vast archive of audio and video from his years as a travel documentarian and author. But even with that wealth of material, Neville found gaps in the record—specific quotes he wanted to include in the film for which no audio existed. Rather than omit them or use a stand-in, he commissioned a software company to build a voice model from roughly a dozen hours of Bourdain's recorded speech.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Neville acknowledged the decision, saying, 'I created an AI model of his voice.' He explained that the three quotes were essential to the narrative, and the AI-generated voice allowed him to deliver them in Bourdain's own cadence and tone. The filmmaker added that the simulated voice is so convincing that viewers would be hard-pressed to identify which lines were not spoken by the real Bourdain.
'If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don't know what the other lines are that were spoken by the AI, and you're not going to know,' Neville told the magazine.
Ethical Questions Loom Over Posthumous Voice Replication
The use of AI to recreate a deceased person's voice has sparked debate among ethicists and documentary filmmakers, particularly in a project that deals with the subject's final years. Critics have called the practice 'ghoulish,' arguing that it risks manipulating the audience's perception of a real person who can no longer consent. Neville, however, dismissed such concerns for the time being, quipping, 'We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.'
The film is not the first to employ synthetic voices, but it is among the most high-profile to do so in a biographical documentary. The technology, often referred to as 'voice cloning,' has advanced rapidly in recent years, with some companies offering services that can replicate a person's voice from just a few minutes of audio. In this case, the model was trained on a larger dataset, allowing for greater accuracy.
Neville's approach has also drawn attention to the broader implications of deepfake technology, which has been used to impersonate public figures in political contexts. The documentary's release comes amid growing scrutiny of AI-generated content and its potential to deceive audiences. While Neville maintains that the AI voice was used only for lines that were otherwise unavailable, the decision has opened a wider conversation about the boundaries of documentary storytelling.
For viewers, the film offers a chance to hear Bourdain's voice once more, even if some of it is digitally recreated. The question of whether that is a fitting tribute or an unsettling overreach is likely to persist as the technology becomes more common in media production.
