Digital necrophilia
Artificial intelligence can learn from files with works of a
particular artist, and then continue to create in his style, even
if the person has already died. Add to this speech generation
technology that can reproduce a person's voice with all its
individual shades and intonations, and you have immortal
avatars for everyone. Reported by Noema Mag
(
https://bit.ly/3wHMx4U). In July, the voice of the famous
chef, traveler and documentary filmmaker Anthony Bourdin
was raised from the dead. In a film about this man's life, he
reads aloud a letter to a friend: "My life has turned to shit.
You, like me, are a successful person. Are you happy?"
However, Bourdin never spoke these words, he only wrote
them. His voice was generated by artificial intelligence. Most
viewers perceived this dialogue as an insult against the
memory of Bourdain.
This is not the first time technology has been used to resurrect
dead celebrities: the Coachella Festival featured a hologram
of Tupac Shakur, a 3D animated Fred Astaire danced in a Dirt
Devil commercial, and Peter Cushing appeared in Rogue One:
A Star Wars Story. But the synthesis of realistic copies of
voices and images of people using neural networks is a whole
new level. Bringing dead performers back to life with synthetic
AI voice models fulfills the dream of bringing the dead back to
life. But the use of voice deepfakes is a controversial practice
from an ethical standpoint. So, Bourdin's voice clone was
criticized on the assumption that he himself might not like it.
As Helen Rosner writes in the New Yorker magazine
(
https://bit.ly/3qDlzdE), authenticity is an integral part of
Bourdin's image. In Plantain, Neville does not inform the
audience that Bourdain never actually spoke these words, so
the director simply deceived the audience. By aligning their
legacy with their own vocal identity, creative style and possible
new contexts generated by AI, artists will be able to create right
from the grave. But first, they will need to determine the
conditions of their posthumous creative activity, deciding how,
when and by whom their music archive can be used to train
algorithms. According to researcher Keith Crawford, the creators
of AI systems are guided by the idea that everything around is
data that can be freely used. According to this view, individual
objects, be they mugshots or musical fragments, are devoid of
personal, social and political significance. Nothing should
interfere with feeding them to neural networks in order to make
money on this.
Intellectual property and copyright laws have not kept pace with
the development of new technologies, and not all judicial
authorities recognize posthumous rights. Nevertheless, artists
and their heirs, if taken care of in advance, will be able to
prevent their voice from becoming a commodity and make their
own decisions about their posthumous work.
