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Fyi they used deepfake AI to have him say various things. Apparently it's not clear in the doc where it's a fake and where it's the doc makers guessing what he

Fyi they used deepfake AI to have him say various things. Apparently it's not clear in the doc where it's a fake and where it's the doc makers guessing what he might say. If ask me pretty disturbing the producers claim to know him and his mind so well that they're comfortable speaking for him.

WillPostForFood 5y ago
https://nypost.com/2021/07/15/director-of-anthony-bourdain-admits-to-using-a-i-voice-over/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/15/director-of-anthony-bourdain-a... It is weird, but they are using the AI generated voice to read actual emails, so they aren’t guessing what he might say.
- ycombobreaker 5y ago
  It's weird, and it crosses the line into misrepresentation. The written word and the spoken word are different forms of communication. A deepfake is using his words but synthesizing his facial expressions, pacing, and tone. 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)
  - mthoms 5y ago
    It's my understanding that the deepfake is voice only - but I might be mistaken.
    - ycombobreaker 5y ago
      Yeah maybe voice only, but my point stands. They are inventing inflection, tone, pacing, etc.
      - mthoms 5y ago
        agreed.
serf 5y ago
>If ask me pretty disturbing the producers claim to know him and his mind so well that they're comfortable speaking for him. 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-uses-deepfake-of-his-voice-2021-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-bourdain-documentary...
hrh 5y ago
Welcome to the future.
zimpenfish 5y ago
Whilst I think the deepfaking of his voice is ethically sketchy, they did at least a) get permission from the family and b) (apparently) only use it on words he had actually written (like emails, etc.) (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.)
- mongol 5y ago
  I think it is strange that family giving permission makes it ok. Would it be ok if they gave permission if he was alive? If not, what makes it ok now?
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    For me, personally, it doesn't make it "ok" but it's certainly a step less ethically sketchy than if it was just done without their permission. I can easily imagine that some people would have "ok/not ok" on either side of the "family permission" line though.
  - GavinMcG 5y ago
    There are a lot of affairs that get passed along to family (or others) after someone death. It would be completely inappropriate for family to close someone's bank account while they still lived; we have no qualms about their doing so after they've died. Publishing yet-unpublished works is another example that this is only a step out two away from.
    - andrewzah 5y ago
      Publishing yet-unpublished works is completely different than generating new work based on the old works. 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.
    - azornathogron 5y ago
      To add to this, when yet-unpublished works are published posthumously, they are commonly edited. For example, several of JRR Tolkien's works were edited for posthumous publication by his son Christopher. And even if the text is totally unchanged there must be choices about what to include and how to present it. 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.
cpach 5y ago
Hm. Interesting. Maybe I’m old-school but as a viewer I think I would prefer a narrator instead of a deepfake.
flycaliguy 5y ago
I think critics of this technique are forgetting how incredibly manipulative film is. It’s a cool new spice on a crowded spice rack.
kevinwang 5y ago
Wow, I watched it and didn't realize. In retrospect, I think I actually did like the deepfake audio more than if a different narrator spoke, but it would have been better if there was a disclaimer in the beginning that he didn't actually voice them.
silicon2401 5y ago
That's horrifying. Almost as bad is seeing that people think it's okay just because his family gave a thumbs up. Great example of people valuing convenience over principles. I would prefer simply making it illegal to use a dead person's image/voice/etc, at least for some number of years after their death.
- randomhodler84 5y ago
  Once you are dead, you no longer own your body, your voice or likeness. You cease to care about nebulous worldly concepts like intellectual property rights.
  - andrewzah 5y ago
    Those actions do affect your (living) family and friends. I would find it appalling if a relative or friend died and suddenly new works came out with "them" speaking via DeepFake/etc. We could just dump corpses in an abyss and clean it up every so often, but we don't, for various reasons.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
    If you think this is about IP you're completely missing the point.
aaron695 5y ago
"Throughout the film, Neville and his team used stitched-together clips of Bourdain's narration pulled from TV, radio, podcasts, and audiobooks." 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."
- mst 5y ago
  Having been a subject of documentary/news type stuff a couple times, yeah, the way it gets put together is just like that. Watching the "noddy shots" being filmed was pretty hilarious though.
- suzzer99 5y ago
  The difference between his reading of Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw is like night and day.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    Medium Raw was completely different. It was like he grew up, had 2.5 kids and a mortgage or something. Totally different vibe.
    - suzzer99 5y ago
      Yeah different vibe but also his narrator voice wasn't developed at all yet with Kitchen Confidential. I found it fascinating comparing the two readings. Also Chapter 3 of Medium Raw - where he eviscerates the idle rich - is maybe the funniest thing I've ever read in my life. http://subwayreads.org/book/medium-raw/ http://subwayreads.org/book/medium-raw/
karaterobot 5y ago
I'm not convinced by the argument that it's okay to deepfake someone's voice because you're "just" reading their own words. A vocal performance is not the same as text: give me the clearest, most innocuous paragraph you can write, and I can easily change the entire meaning of it by delivering the same words with different emphasis, speed, tone, and so on. 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.
- jfengel 5y ago
  That's certainly a lot of what I do as an actor. The words mean what I want them to mean. Or rather, what my director tells me they want them to mean. Whatever tells the story they want to tell. 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.
- d13 5y ago
  It’s called a “dirty reading”
nwsm 5y ago
This is enough for me not to watch it.
- johnnyfived 5y ago
  It's horrible, we can't normalize this
AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
> the producers claim to know him and his mind so well that they're comfortable speaking for him 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.
- mthoms 5y ago
  Refusing to reveal all the parts that were AI generated is very unethical IMHO. It's an extraordinarily bad precedent too: Imagine a world where this is the norm. 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.
  - AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
    > Refusing to reveal all the parts that were AI generated 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.

WillPostForFood 5y ago

https://nypost.com/2021/07/15/director-of-anthony-bourdain-admits-to-using-a-i-voice-over/ https://nypost.com/2021/07/15/director-of-anthony-bourdain-a... It is weird, but they are using the AI generated voice to read actual emails, so they aren’t guessing what he might say.

ycombobreaker 5y ago
It's weird, and it crosses the line into misrepresentation. The written word and the spoken word are different forms of communication. A deepfake is using his words but synthesizing his facial expressions, pacing, and tone. 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)
- mthoms 5y ago
  It's my understanding that the deepfake is voice only - but I might be mistaken.
  - ycombobreaker 5y ago
    Yeah maybe voice only, but my point stands. They are inventing inflection, tone, pacing, etc.
    - mthoms 5y ago
      agreed.

serf 5y ago

>If ask me pretty disturbing the producers claim to know him and his mind so well that they're comfortable speaking for him. 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-uses-deepfake-of-his-voice-2021-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-bourdain-documentary...

hrh 5y ago

Welcome to the future.

zimpenfish 5y ago

Whilst I think the deepfaking of his voice is ethically sketchy, they did at least a) get permission from the family and b) (apparently) only use it on words he had actually written (like emails, etc.) (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.)

mongol 5y ago
I think it is strange that family giving permission makes it ok. Would it be ok if they gave permission if he was alive? If not, what makes it ok now?
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  For me, personally, it doesn't make it "ok" but it's certainly a step less ethically sketchy than if it was just done without their permission. I can easily imagine that some people would have "ok/not ok" on either side of the "family permission" line though.
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  There are a lot of affairs that get passed along to family (or others) after someone death. It would be completely inappropriate for family to close someone's bank account while they still lived; we have no qualms about their doing so after they've died. Publishing yet-unpublished works is another example that this is only a step out two away from.
  - andrewzah 5y ago
    Publishing yet-unpublished works is completely different than generating new work based on the old works. 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.
  - azornathogron 5y ago
    To add to this, when yet-unpublished works are published posthumously, they are commonly edited. For example, several of JRR Tolkien's works were edited for posthumous publication by his son Christopher. And even if the text is totally unchanged there must be choices about what to include and how to present it. 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.

cpach 5y ago

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

flycaliguy 5y ago

I think critics of this technique are forgetting how incredibly manipulative film is. It’s a cool new spice on a crowded spice rack.

kevinwang 5y ago

Wow, I watched it and didn't realize. In retrospect, I think I actually did like the deepfake audio more than if a different narrator spoke, but it would have been better if there was a disclaimer in the beginning that he didn't actually voice them.

silicon2401 5y ago

That's horrifying. Almost as bad is seeing that people think it's okay just because his family gave a thumbs up. Great example of people valuing convenience over principles. I would prefer simply making it illegal to use a dead person's image/voice/etc, at least for some number of years after their death.

randomhodler84 5y ago
Once you are dead, you no longer own your body, your voice or likeness. You cease to care about nebulous worldly concepts like intellectual property rights.
- andrewzah 5y ago
  Those actions do affect your (living) family and friends. I would find it appalling if a relative or friend died and suddenly new works came out with "them" speaking via DeepFake/etc. We could just dump corpses in an abyss and clean it up every so often, but we don't, for various reasons.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  If you think this is about IP you're completely missing the point.

aaron695 5y ago

"Throughout the film, Neville and his team used stitched-together clips of Bourdain's narration pulled from TV, radio, podcasts, and audiobooks." 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."

mst 5y ago
Having been a subject of documentary/news type stuff a couple times, yeah, the way it gets put together is just like that. Watching the "noddy shots" being filmed was pretty hilarious though.
suzzer99 5y ago
The difference between his reading of Kitchen Confidential and Medium Raw is like night and day.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  Medium Raw was completely different. It was like he grew up, had 2.5 kids and a mortgage or something. Totally different vibe.
  - suzzer99 5y ago
    Yeah different vibe but also his narrator voice wasn't developed at all yet with Kitchen Confidential. I found it fascinating comparing the two readings. Also Chapter 3 of Medium Raw - where he eviscerates the idle rich - is maybe the funniest thing I've ever read in my life. http://subwayreads.org/book/medium-raw/ http://subwayreads.org/book/medium-raw/

karaterobot 5y ago

I'm not convinced by the argument that it's okay to deepfake someone's voice because you're "just" reading their own words. A vocal performance is not the same as text: give me the clearest, most innocuous paragraph you can write, and I can easily change the entire meaning of it by delivering the same words with different emphasis, speed, tone, and so on. 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.

jfengel 5y ago
That's certainly a lot of what I do as an actor. The words mean what I want them to mean. Or rather, what my director tells me they want them to mean. Whatever tells the story they want to tell. 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.
d13 5y ago
It’s called a “dirty reading”

nwsm 5y ago

This is enough for me not to watch it.

johnnyfived 5y ago
It's horrible, we can't normalize this

AdamJacobMuller 5y ago

> the producers claim to know him and his mind so well that they're comfortable speaking for him 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.

mthoms 5y ago
Refusing to reveal all the parts that were AI generated is very unethical IMHO. It's an extraordinarily bad precedent too: Imagine a world where this is the norm. 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.
- AdamJacobMuller 5y ago
  > Refusing to reveal all the parts that were AI generated 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.