James Earl Jones Gives Darth Vader Job to AI

James Earl Jones has been the iconic voice of Darth Vader since the first Star Wars movie. He is now 91 years old and ready to retire. A report from Vanity Fair says that Jones signed over the rights to his Darth Vader voice recordings. 

A Ukrainian business called Respeecher can use the old recordings and AI technology to recreate the famous voice. This process was already used in the series Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney Plus.

After James Earl Jones mentioned that he wanted to stop working as Darth Vader, Matthew Wood, a sound editor at Skywalker Sound told Jones about the new technology. Jones then gave Lucasfilm permission to use his voice with AI. 

Lucasfilm asked Respeecher to make Darth Vader sound like the character in the original movie 45 years ago. Some fans noticed that the Darth Vader in the new series Obi-Wan Kenobi sounded like the original and not like Jones’ real voice in the 2019 movie The Rise of Skywalker.

Although Lucasfilm uses AI for Darth Vader’s voice, Wood says that Jones still worked with the film studio to help with the character.

Respeecher has worked with Lucasfilm before. The startup recreated the voice of a young Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. The company used many old recordings of Mark Hamill, the actor who plays Luke Skywalker, in interviews and radio talk shows to digitally recreate his voice.

There are similar AI tools like Voicemod, Veritone, Descript and Resemble AI. They offer ways for celebrities to digitally recreate their voices. The tools might become popular if celebrities want to “rent out” their voices without doing work. Or, in the case with James Earl Jones, the tools can help preserve the voice of one of the most famous villains in film.