Neville also told GQ magazine that he got the approval of Bourdain’s widow and literary executor. The chef’s wife, Ottavia Busia, responded by tweet: “I certainly was NOT the one who said Tony would have been cool with that.”
Although tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon have dominated text-to-speech research, there are now also a number of startups like Descript that offer voice-cloning software. The uses range from talking customer service chatbots to video games and podcasting.
Many of these voice cloning companies prominently feature an ethics policy on their website that explains the terms of use. Of nearly a dozen firms contacted by The Associated Press, many said they didn’t recreate Bourdain’s voice and wouldn’t have if asked. Others didn’t respond.
“We have pretty strong polices around what can be done on our platform,” said Zohaib Ahmed, founder and CEO of Resemble AI, a Toronto company that sells a custom AI voice generator service. “When you’re creating a voice clone, it requires consent from whoever’s voice it is.”
Ahmed said the rare occasions where he’s allowed some posthumous voice cloning were for academic research, including a project working with the voice of Winston Churchill, who died in 1965.
Ahmed said a more common commercial use is to edit a TV ad recorded by real voice actors and then customize it to a region by adding a local reference. It’s also used to dub anime movies and other videos, by taking a voice in one language and making it speak a different language, he said.
