(I say 'apparently' because whilst one use for it was confirmed as reading an email, the producer seems to be refusing to clarify where the other deepfaked audio is.)

Publishing yet-unpublished works is another example that this is only a step out two away from.

IMHO it's not at all strange for the family (particularly the offspring) of the deceased to make decisions, including creative/artistic/editorial decisions, about how their loved one's work and life are used and portrayed.

He chose them because they were the ones most compatible with the other published works, because his father could never revise them. (Unlike The Hobbit, which as revised to make it more compatible with upcoming The Lord of the Rings.)

He was specifically chosen for the job by his father, who may not have agreed with the choices but was unequivocal that Christopher was the one to make them. Christopher himself has said that he'd change some decisions if he were to make them again, but that's true for any author.

To me, I'd just as soon The Silmarillion bear Chrisopher's name. Not as a matter of honor, but as a matter of clarity to fans who want to know what's "really" Tolkien.

I suppose our wills now will need to include statements about not allowing family/etc to do things like this, at least under our names.

I can easily imagine that some people would have "ok/not ok" on either side of the "family permission" line though.

What I do take issue with is doing this in a documentary.

People might be led into thinking that he actually read those letters aloud.

This can happen on purpose or by accident. It happens in documentaries all the time, with actors reading primary sources. But, the difference is that using a facsimile of Bourdain's voice makes it seem like a legitimate historical record, and not the creation of the director, which is what it is.

It helps that I tend to work with classic texts, written with a minimum of commentary from the writer. Writers today tend to add a lot of extra stuff to their scripts telling me that they want the words to mean, and controlling every motion as if I were a puppet. Personally, I find that less interesting.

It was supposedly an email he wrote[0], but I can still sympathize with your point : my voice/dialect/vocabulary in person are different than the ones I use 'online', i'd hate for someone to make the assumption that I would ever speak 1:1 with the way I type to people.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-bourdain-documentary...

Maybe I’m old-school but as a viewer I think I would prefer a narrator instead of a deepfake.

It is weird, but they are using the AI generated voice to read actual emails, so they aren’t guessing what he might say.

Everything we know about how information is lost from face2face to text--why /s is a thing in the first place--should reinforce this. A deepfake is still a small fiction.

(edit for spelling)

They aren't making up words though, they're "merely" having an AI read words we know he wrote. Is that ethical? I'm not sure. Neither is the filmmaker:

> Neville said. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”

I'm comfortable saying it's not disingenuous though.

The only benefit to concealing this important detail is generating controversy and getting his film talked about. This is a very selfish move by the filmmaker.

I don't disagree but I think he's genuinely saying at some point he wants to have that documentary ethics panel.

I think it's far more interesting to wait a bit (after it's out on streaming/blu-ray/etc) and see if anyone can figure it out. I think he's actually INVITING that kind of discussion and analysis by giving everyone exactly the information they would need to do so.

A) here's a voiceover which was done by AI B) obviously here's a lot of legitimate samples C) here's how I did it D) there are two other fakes, go find them.

I think it's a really good discussion to have.

It’s a cool new spice on a crowded spice rack.

I'd read that as using normal audio out of context.

All documentaries lie. A lot, not just a little. Bourdain's shows were never an exact truth either.

It's a new interesting way to lie though, I guess it comes down to what were are ok being lied to about.

"We worked with four companies before settling on the best. We also had to figure out the best tone of Tony’s voice: His speaking voice versus his “narrator” voice, which itself changed dramatically of over the years. The narrator voice got very performative and sing-songy in the No Reservation years."

Watching the "noddy shots" being filmed was pretty hilarious though.

Totally different vibe.

http://subwayreads.org/book/medium-raw/

We could just dump corpses in an abyss and clean it up every so often, but we don't, for various reasons.