Star Wars fans recently learned that James Earl Jones is stepping away from voicing Darth Vader, a role he has had since the original 1977 film. Now, we also know how Lucasfilm will move forward without the 91-year old acting legend: the voice of Vader will now be created using AI technology and previous recordings of his voice.
Word of Jones’ retirement came from Star Wars supervising sound editor Matthew Wood in an interview with Vanity Fair. “He had mentioned he was looking into winding down this particular character,” Wood said when Jones came to Lucasfilm to record a single line for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. As a result, Lucasfilm turned to the Respeecher technology to recreate the Vader voice.
Using previously-recorded lines Jones spoke as Darth Vader, Respeecher created an AI-generated “clone” of the voice, which is then laid over new lines that are read by another actor to create all-new lines that sound eerily like James Earl Jones. In fact, Vader’s voice in the recent Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi was created using the technology; Jones did not perform the lines.
Jones has now reportedly signed over his permission to use recordings of his voice for any future use in upcoming Star Wars projects. It’s both the end of an era, and the start of a new one.
The Respeecher tech was also used to create Luke Skywalker’s voice for the character’s appearance in the series The Book of Boba Fett; Mark Hamill did not provide lines for the character.
This video compares the differences in Vader’s voice throughout the years.
“The way it works is that we get a bunch of initial takes,” Dmytro Bielievtsov, Respeecher’s chief technical officer, explained to The Guardian. “We convert them with different varieties of the models, and then the client takes a listen and sees if the performance is right. Maybe things need to be tweaked or adjusted, but then they pick the model that they liked the most, and we proceed from there.” He said Lucasfilm found out about their technology when someone mentioned it online, and approached them.
In this video by Respeecher, we see first-hand how the technology can change any voice. This better explains why the Vader in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series sounded closer to the Original Trilogy Vader, as opposed to the Rogue One Vader, which was voiced by James Earl Jones and reflected the changes in his older voice.
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