"Luke, I am your father" are five of the most famous words ever spoken on screen. When Darth Vader shattered Luke Skywalker's world in "The Empire Strikes Back," he sent shivers down the spines of audiences everywhere--in large part because of actor James Earl Jones' famous baritone. Now, Jones, 91, has announced he is hanging up the mask and retiring as the voice of one of the most infamous cinematic villains. But don't despair: Although Jones will no longer record new lines for Star Wars projects, the character--and Jones' voice--will live on thanks to artificial intelligence. As first reported by Vanity Fair, Respeecher, a Ukrainian voice synthesis company, will use a combination of archival recordings, voice acting and AI technology to continue bringing Darth Vader to the screen.

Your voice reveals more about you than you realize. To the human ear, your voice can instantly give away your mood, for example--it's easy to tell if you're excited or upset. But machines can learn a lot more: inferring your age, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, health conditions, and beyond. Researchers have even been able to generate images of faces based on the information contained in individuals' voice data. As machines become better at understanding you through your voice, companies are cashing in.

How developers are humanizing their virtual personal assistants. The virtual personal assistant is romanticized in utopian portrayals of the future from The Jetsons to Star Trek. It's the cultured, disembodied voice at humanity's beck and call, eager and willing to do any number of menial tasks. In its early real-world implementations, a virtual receptionist directed customers ('To hear more menu options, press 9′). It wasn't until 2011 that Apple released Siri and the public had its first interactions with a commercially viable, dynamic personal assistant. Since Siri's debut with the release of the iPhone 4S, Apple's massive customer base has only gotten larger; the company estimates that more than 700 million iPhones are currently in use worldwide. Amazon's Alexa and Microsoft's Cortana debuted in 2014; Google Assistant followed in 2016.

The virtual personal assistant is romanticized in utopian portrayals of the future from The Jetsons to Star Trek. It's the cultured, disembodied voice at humanity's beck and call, eager and willing to do any number of menial tasks. In its early real-world implementations, a virtual receptionist directed customers ('To hear more menu options, press 9'). It wasn't until 2011 that Apple released Siri and the public had its first interactions with a commercially viable, dynamic personal assistant. Since Siri's debut with the release of the iPhone 4S, Apple's massive customer base has only gotten larger; the company estimates that more than 700 million iPhones are currently in use worldwide. Amazon's Alexa and Microsoft's Cortana debuted in 2014; Google Assistant followed in 2016. IT research firm Gartner predicts that many touch-required tasks on mobile apps will become voice activated within the next several years.