A new Anthony Bourdain documentary has sparked controversy after it was revealed that a portion of the lines heard in the late host’s voice were actually faked using voice synthesis AI. Documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville doesn’t care what you think. He’s made that clear in basically every interview he’s given over the past several days, as he’s stomped through the media rounds to make the point that he’s not sorry he used a so-called “deepfake” of Anthony Bourdain’s voice in his latest film. In his opinion, he has nothing to be sorry for. “If you watch the film… you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the A.I., and you’re not going to know,” Neville said in an interview with the New Yorker. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.” Since his flippant reaction to outcry, however, the film’s production company has made it clear that just three lines in the documentary were faked in this way, and that all three lines were quotes from Bourdain’s own writing. Perhaps defending himself just a bit, Neville is quoted in the same interview as saying that he “wasn’t putting words in [Bourdain’s] mouth, just trying to make them come alive.” Image credit: Focus Features The outcry seems fairly one-sided in this case, since the documentary directly implied that these were real recordings of Bourdain’s voice, and since Neville’s claim to have consulted with Bourdain’s estate seems to be false. But what about narrative film? We...
Published By: CineD - Wednesday, 21 July, 2021