Readers respond to Hannah Goldfield's Take about Anthony Bourdain and James Somers's piece about whether A.I. is thinking. Hannah Goldfield's article about "Don't Eat Before Reading This," by Anthony Bourdain, brought back memories of when I first learned of this new voice straddling the restaurant and literary worlds ( Takes, November 17th). When Bourdain's book "Kitchen Confidential" came out, in 2000, I was the general manager of an Italian restaurant at a historic five-star hotel. The staff was full of brainy foodies, and we talked about the book endlessly. We all thought Bourdain might end up being a flash in the pan, but were happy to be proved wrong.

When a beloved actor or musician passes away, they always leave behind that lingering thought of what they might have been able to create if they'd only had a little more time. However, as John Lennon's posthumous chart success has shown, for the stars of the future, death doesn't need to be the final curtain call. From actors making ghostly returns to the screen or famous figures narrating the story of their own lives, AI is reviving more than just celebs' careers. But when stardom doesn't end with death, who gets the final say on a celebrity's legacy? Here, MailOnline reveals how these creepy technologies are bringing back your favourite figures from the past to perform again.

Sounds like the perfect technology for anyone who wants to advance Steve Bannon's'flood the zone with shit' strategy.

With the tremendous advances in how AI/ML technologies are being deployed, one of the most exciting, controversial, and rapidly evolving advances relates to human voice. One particular example jumps out as encapsulating the complex of issues and emotions tied to AI-powered voices. Last summer, AI technology was used to give voice to some of the late Anthony Bourdain's writings, words that he never spoke or read aloud but were nevertheless his; voice cloning technology brought the text to life in Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain. Some in the audience felt duped that it wasn't really Bourdain, others thought the move was a misstep as Bourdain was not alive to give permission to manipulate his voice in such a way, while many felt it was simply a creative storytelling device. The Bourdain example highlights two key issues that will rise to the forefront of how AI-based voice technologies will be used in the future.

Did you miss a session from the Future of Work Summit? With the tremendous advances in how AI/ML technologies are being deployed, one of the most exciting, controversial, and rapidly evolving advances relates to human voice. One particular example jumps out as encapsulating the complex of issues and emotions tied to AI-powered voices. Last summer, AI technology was used to give voice to some of the late Anthony Bourdain's writings, words that he never spoke or read aloud but were nevertheless his; voice cloning technology brought the text to life in Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain. Some in the audience felt duped that it wasn't really Bourdain, others thought the move was a misstep as Bourdain was not alive to give permission to manipulate his voice in such a way, while many felt it was simply a creative storytelling device.

Easily available software can imitate a person's voice with such accuracy that it can fool both humans and smart devices, according to a new report. Researchers at the University of Chicago's Security, Algorithms, Networking and Data (SAND) Lab tested deepfake voice synthesis programs available on the open-source developer community site Github to see if they could unlock voice-recognition security on Amazon's Alexa, WeChat and Microsoft Azure. One of the programs, known as SV2TTS, only needs five seconds' worth to make a passable imitation, according to its developers. Described as a'real-time voice cloning toolbox,' SV2TTS was able to trick Microsoft Azure about 30 percent of the time but got the best of both WeChat and Amazon Alexa almost two-thirds, or 63 percent, of the time. It was also able to fool human ears: 200 volunteers asked to identify the real voices from the deepfakes were tricked about half the time. The deepfake audio was more successful at faking women's voices and those of non-native English speakers, though, 'why that happened, we need to investigate further,' SAND Lab researcher Emily Wenger told New Scientist.

Cloning your voice using artificial intelligence is simultaneously tedious and simple: hallmarks of a technology that's just about mature and ready to go public. All you need to do is talk into a microphone for 30 minutes or so, reading a script as carefully as you can (in my case: the voiceover from a David Attenborough documentary). After starting and stopping dozens of times to re-record your flubs and mumbles, you'll send off the resulting audio files to be processed and, in a few hours' time, be told that a copy of your voice is ready and waiting. Then, you can type anything you want into a chatbox, and your AI clone will say it back to you, with the resulting audio realistic to fool even friends and family -- at least for a few moments. The fact that such a service even exists may be news to many, and I don't believe we've begun to fully consider the impact easy access to this technology will have.

I am regularly asked to summarize my many posts. I thought it would be a good idea to publish on this blog, every Monday, some of the most relevant articles that I have already shared with you on my social networks. Today I will share some of the most relevant articles about Artificial Intelligence and in what form you can find it in today's life. I will also comment on the articles. Can artificial intelligence help scientists spot gravitational waves?

A new GamesBeat event is around the corner! Learn more about what comes next. Roadrunner, the documentary film about Anthony Bourdain, contains a scene in which the epicure utters words from letters he wrote to the artist David Choe. This wouldn't be unusual in and of itself -- if it weren't for the fact that Bourdain never read the letters. Rather, the clips were generated by a company that director Morgan Neville hired to model Bourdain's voice.

When Roadrunner, a documentary about late TV chef and traveler Anthony Bourdain, opened in theaters last month, its director, Morgan Neville, spiced up promotional interviews with an unconventional disclosure for a documentarian. Some words viewers hear Bourdain speak in the film were faked by artificial intelligence software used to mimic the star's voice. Accusations from Bourdain fans that Neville had acted unethically quickly came to dominate coverage of the film. Despite that attention, how much of the fake Bourdain's voice is in the two-hour movie, and what it said, has been unclear--until now. In an interview that made his film infamous, Neville told The New Yorker that he had generated three fake Bourdain clips with the permission of his estate, all from words the chef had written or said but that were not available as audio.