James Earl Jones, the iconic voice behind Darth Vader, has decided to retire after voicing the beloved villain for decades.
Although Jones will not be continuing to record lines for the character, Disney will use an AI program to recreate his voice so that Darth Vader can continue to have the iconic style of speech that made him such a feared villain, Vanity Fair reported.
Respeecher, a Ukrainian startup, was given the task to create a realistic version of Jones’ voice as it sounded in the original trilogy for the recent Disney+ Star Wars series, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Jones, who is now 91, recorded a Darth Vader voice cameo for The Rise of Skywalker, sound editor Matthew Wood told Vanity Fair. Jones agreed to let Lucasfilm continue to use his voice for Darth Vader via AI technology.
Wood said to Vanity fair that Jones “had mentioned he was looking into winding down this particular character.”
Wood explained that throughout the process of making Vader’s voice for Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jones was involved in helping to guide the team recreate his voice.
This isn’t the first time Lucasfilm has used AI to help voicing characters in recent projects. In The Book of Boba Fett, Luke Skywalker’s younger voice was fine-tuned using Respeecher.
James Earl Jones, an EGOT-winning actor, has been the voice of Darth Vader since 1977’s A New Hope.
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