[A new documentary about Anthony Bourdain
has ignited a debate, after film-makers
revealed they had used an AI simulation
of the late chef's voice.
Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
was narrated using archive material
supplemented by a synthetic voice
reading short extracts of writing by
Mr Bourdain, who died in 2018.
Director Morgan Neville called it a
modern storytelling technique.
But some critics questioned whether it was ethical.
Mr Neville said that the synthetic voice
was created by feeding more than
10 hours of Mr Bourdain's voice into a
machine-learning system.
"There were a few sentences that [Bourdain]
wrote that he never spoke aloud," he told Variety.
So the computerised voice was used
to bring his writing to life.
He said the technique was used in the film
with the support of Mr Bourdain's estate
and literary agent.
Mr Bourdain, who took his own life in 2018,
was one of America's best-known celebrity chefs,
presenting food and travel
programmes and writing a number of best-selling books.
In 2016, he shared a $6 (£4.30) meal
with Barack Obama in a small Hanoi restaurant
when the then-US president visited Vietnam.]
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57842514
AI simulation of this Dead chef
has got many upset.