Anthony Bourdain Deepfake Controversy Points to Pitfalls of AI-Generated Content

As synthetic media grows more popular as a creative tool, creators must navigate new ethical ground

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A new documentary on the life of Anthony Bourdain is facing backlash after the director revealed he used machine learning techniques to clone the late celebrity chef’s voice and narrate select quotes of which no actual audio recordings exist.

Morgan Neville, whose film Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain hit theaters last week, admitted in interviews with GQ and the New Yorker the production team had trained an artificial intelligence model on hours of recordings of Bourdain’s voice in order to bring to life at least three lines of his writing.

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