45 years after first lending his voice to the Dark Lord of the Sith, it seems that James Earl Jones has decided to call time on his iconic role as the voice of Darth Vader, with a Vanity Fair report revealing that the screen legend has stepped back from performing the character following the AI-produced work on Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Although Jones was credited for the Obi-Wan series, the now-91 year old actor’s involvement was limited to “guiding the performance”, which was in actually created by the Ukrainian company Respeecher, a tech startup which uses archival recordings to create new conversations through artificial intelligence.
Respeecher originally worked with Lucasfilm to create the voice of a youthful Luke Skywalker for his appearance in Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett, and according to Vanity Fair’s report, when Jones heard the their work he agreed to sign off on Lucasfilm using AI to replicate his voice for both the series and future Star Wars appearances. In other words, Vader’s voice is more machine now than man.
James Earl Jones first lent his voice to Darth Vader in the original Star Wars back in 1977 and would reprise the role for The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars Rebels and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. His last recordings for Vader came with the character’s single line in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
