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As I understand it (I read this on Twitter so massive grain of salt etc.) the family concented to this explicitly. Would you feel better if it was a voice actor

As I understand it (I read this on Twitter so massive grain of salt etc.) the family concented to this explicitly. Would you feel better if it was a voice actor who could read Bourdain’s email in a perfect mimic? What about historical recreations, would you object to computers being involved in, say, recreating Abraham Lincoln’s voice? Does the age of the subject matter? I think the squeamishness about AI as it becomes more and more capable will be interesting to define why we are feeling it. The machine is going to be capable of (and consequently used to do) these things whether you like it or not.

briefcomment 5y ago
His widow did not provide consent [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/OttaviaBourdain/status/1415889455005716485 https://twitter.com/OttaviaBourdain/status/14158894550057164...
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  Cool, great to get that clarified but also good to see I didn’t invent the fact they claimed to have asked.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    That wasn't the fact that you stated.
    - rovr138 5y ago
      >As I understand it (I read this on Twitter so massive grain of salt etc.) the family concented to this explicitly. This is the "fact". Half of it is a caveat to take it with a grain of salt.
  - unishark 5y ago
    We don't know that anyone lied. The guy had two ex-wives and a girlfriend. Perhaps they didn't ask enough family members for someone's taste. But as others noted, an objection from one ex-wife doesn't really make that case very strongly.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  I don’t think you count as someone’s widow if you split up before they die.
- sen 5y ago
  She's not his widow, she's his estranged ex-wife. I should hope people's ex-wives don't get authority over their lives later (unless it's related to kids/shared-assets/etc). The family giving consent is way more relevant.
  - nxpnsv 5y ago
    That’s a response to that the movie people stated they cleared the scenes with his widow.
  - GravitasFailure 5y ago
    > She's not his widow, she's his estranged ex-wife. That's incorrect. They were still married when he died and most of Bourdain's estate was left to their daughter with Ottavia overseeing it. "The family," in this case, is Ottavia and Ariadne Bourdain. https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/07/06/anthony-bourdain-leaves-most-1-million-estate-his-daughter/762439002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/07/06/anthon...
    - sen 5y ago
      From TFA: > estranged wife Ottavia Busia-Bourdain He left her in charge of the trust/etc because she's still the mother of his child, and therefore a major part of his life, but they weren't together.
      - GravitasFailure 5y ago
        Fine. Estranged widow. The point is if anyone has control of his legacy, it's her, and the director claims to have consulted his widow which couldn't really be anyone other than her, which means one of them is lying about giving the go ahead to do the deepfake voiceover.
virtue3 5y ago
Historical recreations are fine. Creating a digital voice model of abraham lincoln and then using it for ??? is not. All of this is being done for profit means (the orville redenbacher, fast furious, star wars). Just because we can doesn't mean we shouldn't stop and think if we should.
- andy_ppp 5y ago
  On which timescale does something become historical? Are the Beatles historical, to you maybe not but possibly to your children? Where is the line you’re drawing? If I’m honest humans have never done the moral thinking, we largely just middle through and hope to get away with it.
  - patrickthebold 5y ago
    Time doesn't matter as much as what is said. Fake Anthony Bourdain voice reading something he wrote seems fine to me, especially in the context of, say, a documentary. John Lennon's voice doing an ad for Vox amps seems in poor taste.
    - noxvilleza 5y ago
      The change of medium is significant IMO. Rarely in spoken word do we expect a citation of when/where the words are spoken (barring for example, famous speeches/addresses), but in written form it often is. In this case, Fake AB Voice was reading part of a bigger piece of text - but it's not obvious what that underlying text is, making further analysis of the context in which it's spoken a bit more difficult.
    - serf 5y ago
      >John Lennon's voice doing an ad for Vox amps seems in poor taste. the Bourdain documentary we're talking about was created in order to generate profit; it has box-office showings and advertisement campaigns. A documentary is nice, but I fail to see how it's less of a product than Vox amplifiers, aside from some shallow altruism like "We're spreading the ideas of Bourdain", which could be done entirely without a profit scheme.
ineptech 5y ago
Any of those are fine - with disclosure. It seems pretty clear that in this case, they were less than transparent. > “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, 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 told the reviewer, Helen Rosner. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.” ...or we can have it sooner, on Twitter, and you'll get excoriated, and rightly so. I don't care if they train an AI to imitate Bourdain rapping the third verse from Modern Major General, it's a free country, but you have to be honest about it. You can't call yourself a documentarian and get cutesy about the authenticity of the material.
- speleding 5y ago
  Call me cynical, but a documentary needs publicity to be successful. It seems to me this ethical dilemma gives just about the right amount of outrage for people to pay attention without it overly hurting the film maker's reputation. Perhaps we'll see a mea culpa later on, where he will say he misjudged the amount of outrage, which is not a real apology, so lots of commenters will jump on that thereby providing even more publicity.
  - Xplune13 5y ago
    I just don't like how people will go to any length just for "publicity". Creating an outrage for some publicity of a documentary just doesn't sit right with me. Yes, it is an effective step or publicity stunt, but how does people don't have that inner voice? (I don't know what to call it) that tells them that this isn't what they should be doing without proper consent of the family members and without any disclosure over what is real and what isn't.
    - latexr 5y ago
      > I don't know what to call it A conscience.
spoonjim 5y ago
I don’t think my family should have the ability to make decisions regarding my likeness. My likeness is one of those things which is just totally 100% mine. I married my wife and had kids with her and would want her to have all of my money if I died but wouldn’t want her to be able to license my voice and face to promote Wheaties cereal or something. It shouldn’t be allowed unless the person explicitly grants those rights while alive.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  When did you get a copyright on your likeness? Your likeness might not be unique or unique enough for others to identify a distinct you. 1,000 Elvis' likenesses disagree.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    You get a copyright automatically on anything you write... why not on your likeness (insofar as it specifically refers to you)? The 1,000 Elvises are part of the problem: although Elvis chose to be an extremely public figure, I'm not sure he would want his likeness to essentially be a cartoon character for Vegas weddings and the like. I would say that a person's likeness should be off-limits to everyone, unless specifically authorized while alive, for the duration of the copyright term (70 years after death), and then become public domain (family members should not be monetizing their relative's likeness after their death, unless specifically authorized to do so).
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      How do you deal with twins or similiar likeness between parent/child?
      - spoonjim 5y ago
        Existing law on likeness already deals with this. If you're the identical twin of a celebrity, you're allowed to use your likeness as it relates to you (i.e. use your photograph to promote your real estate business). You're not allowed to use it to suggest the celebrity in question.

briefcomment 5y ago

His widow did not provide consent [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/OttaviaBourdain/status/1415889455005716485 https://twitter.com/OttaviaBourdain/status/14158894550057164...

andy_ppp 5y ago
Cool, great to get that clarified but also good to see I didn’t invent the fact they claimed to have asked.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  That wasn't the fact that you stated.
  - rovr138 5y ago
    >As I understand it (I read this on Twitter so massive grain of salt etc.) the family concented to this explicitly. This is the "fact". Half of it is a caveat to take it with a grain of salt.
- unishark 5y ago
  We don't know that anyone lied. The guy had two ex-wives and a girlfriend. Perhaps they didn't ask enough family members for someone's taste. But as others noted, an objection from one ex-wife doesn't really make that case very strongly.
spoonjim 5y ago
I don’t think you count as someone’s widow if you split up before they die.
sen 5y ago
She's not his widow, she's his estranged ex-wife. I should hope people's ex-wives don't get authority over their lives later (unless it's related to kids/shared-assets/etc). The family giving consent is way more relevant.
- nxpnsv 5y ago
  That’s a response to that the movie people stated they cleared the scenes with his widow.
- GravitasFailure 5y ago
  > She's not his widow, she's his estranged ex-wife. That's incorrect. They were still married when he died and most of Bourdain's estate was left to their daughter with Ottavia overseeing it. "The family," in this case, is Ottavia and Ariadne Bourdain. https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/07/06/anthony-bourdain-leaves-most-1-million-estate-his-daughter/762439002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/07/06/anthon...
  - sen 5y ago
    From TFA: > estranged wife Ottavia Busia-Bourdain He left her in charge of the trust/etc because she's still the mother of his child, and therefore a major part of his life, but they weren't together.
    - GravitasFailure 5y ago
      Fine. Estranged widow. The point is if anyone has control of his legacy, it's her, and the director claims to have consulted his widow which couldn't really be anyone other than her, which means one of them is lying about giving the go ahead to do the deepfake voiceover.

virtue3 5y ago

Historical recreations are fine. Creating a digital voice model of abraham lincoln and then using it for ??? is not. All of this is being done for profit means (the orville redenbacher, fast furious, star wars). Just because we can doesn't mean we shouldn't stop and think if we should.

andy_ppp 5y ago
On which timescale does something become historical? Are the Beatles historical, to you maybe not but possibly to your children? Where is the line you’re drawing? If I’m honest humans have never done the moral thinking, we largely just middle through and hope to get away with it.
- patrickthebold 5y ago
  Time doesn't matter as much as what is said. Fake Anthony Bourdain voice reading something he wrote seems fine to me, especially in the context of, say, a documentary. John Lennon's voice doing an ad for Vox amps seems in poor taste.
  - noxvilleza 5y ago
    The change of medium is significant IMO. Rarely in spoken word do we expect a citation of when/where the words are spoken (barring for example, famous speeches/addresses), but in written form it often is. In this case, Fake AB Voice was reading part of a bigger piece of text - but it's not obvious what that underlying text is, making further analysis of the context in which it's spoken a bit more difficult.
  - serf 5y ago
    >John Lennon's voice doing an ad for Vox amps seems in poor taste. the Bourdain documentary we're talking about was created in order to generate profit; it has box-office showings and advertisement campaigns. A documentary is nice, but I fail to see how it's less of a product than Vox amplifiers, aside from some shallow altruism like "We're spreading the ideas of Bourdain", which could be done entirely without a profit scheme.

ineptech 5y ago

Any of those are fine - with disclosure. It seems pretty clear that in this case, they were less than transparent. > “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, 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 told the reviewer, Helen Rosner. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.” ...or we can have it sooner, on Twitter, and you'll get excoriated, and rightly so. I don't care if they train an AI to imitate Bourdain rapping the third verse from Modern Major General, it's a free country, but you have to be honest about it. You can't call yourself a documentarian and get cutesy about the authenticity of the material.

speleding 5y ago
Call me cynical, but a documentary needs publicity to be successful. It seems to me this ethical dilemma gives just about the right amount of outrage for people to pay attention without it overly hurting the film maker's reputation. Perhaps we'll see a mea culpa later on, where he will say he misjudged the amount of outrage, which is not a real apology, so lots of commenters will jump on that thereby providing even more publicity.
- Xplune13 5y ago
  I just don't like how people will go to any length just for "publicity". Creating an outrage for some publicity of a documentary just doesn't sit right with me. Yes, it is an effective step or publicity stunt, but how does people don't have that inner voice? (I don't know what to call it) that tells them that this isn't what they should be doing without proper consent of the family members and without any disclosure over what is real and what isn't.
  - latexr 5y ago
    > I don't know what to call it A conscience.

spoonjim 5y ago

I don’t think my family should have the ability to make decisions regarding my likeness. My likeness is one of those things which is just totally 100% mine. I married my wife and had kids with her and would want her to have all of my money if I died but wouldn’t want her to be able to license my voice and face to promote Wheaties cereal or something. It shouldn’t be allowed unless the person explicitly grants those rights while alive.

ipaddr 5y ago
When did you get a copyright on your likeness? Your likeness might not be unique or unique enough for others to identify a distinct you. 1,000 Elvis' likenesses disagree.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  You get a copyright automatically on anything you write... why not on your likeness (insofar as it specifically refers to you)? The 1,000 Elvises are part of the problem: although Elvis chose to be an extremely public figure, I'm not sure he would want his likeness to essentially be a cartoon character for Vegas weddings and the like. I would say that a person's likeness should be off-limits to everyone, unless specifically authorized while alive, for the duration of the copyright term (70 years after death), and then become public domain (family members should not be monetizing their relative's likeness after their death, unless specifically authorized to do so).
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    How do you deal with twins or similiar likeness between parent/child?
    - spoonjim 5y ago
      Existing law on likeness already deals with this. If you're the identical twin of a celebrity, you're allowed to use your likeness as it relates to you (i.e. use your photograph to promote your real estate business). You're not allowed to use it to suggest the celebrity in question.