James Earl Jones Signed Documents to

Use AI to Voice Darth Vader Before He Died

 

This was a smart and foresighted decision.

The late, great James Earl Jones collaborated with an AI voice company a few years prior to his passing in order to immortalize his trademark baritone and the “Star Wars” character he created with it.

Jones collaborated with the Ukrainian company Respeecher in 2022 to replicate his silky voice for the Disney+ series “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” By doing this, he also gave up control of his incredibly identifiable voice, which he contributed to a number of films and television shows, like “The Lion King” and “The Hunt for Red October.”

Respeecher trained its AI to sound like Harrison Ford from the original “Star Wars” movies by using clips from those films rather than the actor’s then-current voice. Jones gave Disney and Lucasfilm advice on the character when the show was being developed, even though his voice as an older man wasn’t used to train the AI data for the Vader cloning.

The Kyiv-based company had to contend with its own real-life strife during the early days of Russia’s invasion of the Ukrainian capital, which coincided with Respeecher concluding the project, much like the on-screen violence that characterizes the “Star Wars” world.

Although Jones undoubtedly gave permission for his audio likeness to be recreated after his passing, another “Star Wars” coworker who costarred with Vader in the 1977 film “A New Hope” has also made headlines following his passing, but for a different reason.

According to the Times of London, producer Kevin Francis, who collaborated with late actor Peter Cushing, is suing Disney for resurrecting the actor’s role as the imperial commander Grand Moff Tarkin in the 2016 “Rogue One” prequel, some 22 years after Cushing’s passing.
Francis asserts that Cushing instructed him before his passing in 1994 that no one was to use his likeness in a digital form without getting his specific consent; Disney, according to the producer’s producer’s lawsuit, didn’t clear.

Disney claimed in its response that it paid Cushing’s agent to use his likeness to revive the Tarkin character in “Rogue One” and that Francis was seeking “unjust enrichment” when suing the entertainment monolith for more than $650,000.
Still, a British High Court judge ruled against Disney’s attempts to get the suit thrown out.

With that contextual hindsight, Jones’ contract with Respeecher seems all the smarter for protecting the rights to his valuable voice asset especially given that he was only paid $7,000 for his work on “A New Hope” back in the 70s.