My brother and I had a running joke that Tom Araya from Slayer died in the mid 90s, based on his ashen appearance in the Divine Intervention sleeve. Our “theory

My brother and I had a running joke that Tom Araya from Slayer died in the mid 90s, based on his ashen appearance in the Divine Intervention sleeve. Our “theory” was all of his vocals after then were bits of previous recordings reassembled into new songs. It sounded technically possible with manual editing back then, but it has already gone so far as to automatable. In this case, for a documentary, I see how that’s a defensible used case. They could hire an actor to read the email, imitating Bourdain’s voice as closely as possible, to the same effect. Other uses certainly could be problematic. Discussing them and working out legal and cultural rules is very relevant right now. We’ve already had posthumous celebrity event appearances over the past couple of years. Famous actors could be in movies with needing to be involved very much - mainly an IP license. I have no doubt record companies would love to create new music with all the artists of the 60s-80s, dead or alive.