James Earl Jones Gives Up Voice Of Darth Vader After 45 Years!
More than 40 decades, but the voice will live on!
He is no longer the voice of the dark side.
The 91-year-old actor, who has voiced Vader since the franchise’s first film, “Star Wars: A New Hope,” in 1977, signed over the rights to his vocal chops earlier this year, allowing Vader’s lines to now be generated using artificial intelligence.
The company that now owns his voice is a Ukrainian start-up Re-speecher. They specialize in voice cloning for content creators, using archival recordings and an AI algorithm.
This was done in collaboration with Disney-owned “Star Wars” production company Lucasfilm, which explained that Jones “guided” the character’s lines in the show, but his actual voice was generated by Respeecher, according to AV Club.
The project coincided with the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Respeecher’s employees saw it to completion.
