Hear Val Kilmer's voice, re-created by AI after throat cancer took it away

Surgery in 2014 forever altered Kilmer's natural voice. The Iceman will not be silenced. Beloved actor Val Kilmer of Top Gun, Tombstone and Willow fame, among many others, lost his voice -- and his career -- to throat cancer after a tracheotomy in 2014. In 2020, Kilmer turned to British AI company Sonantic to create a model of his voice, basically a custom-built audio-only deepfake for the actor's personal use. Sonantic creates voice models primarily for video games using actors who read hours worth of scripts.