The new Anthony Bourdain documentary 'Roadrunner' leans partly on deepfaked audio

On July 16th, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain will open in US theatres. Like many documentaries, the film pieces together archival footage, including interviews and show outtakes, to attempt to tell the story of its subject in their own words. It also includes words Bourdain never spoke to a camera before his death by suicide in 2018, and yet you'll hear his voice saying them. In an interview with The New Yorker, the film's director, Morgan Neville, said there were three quotes he wanted Bourdain to narrate where there were no recordings, and so he recreated them with software instead. "I created an AI model of his voice," he told the magazine.