Some of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s voice actors had digital help, but Lucasfilm won’t say who
If you’ve ever watched aStar Wars show on Disney Plus, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with the work of tech startup Respeecher, whether you realize it or not. The Ukrainian company’s AI-powered voice cloning platform provided Mark Hamill’s de-aged vocal performance in both The Mandalorianand The Book of Boba Fett, as well as for an as-yet-unidentified character in Obi-Wan Kenobi. Lucasfilm has asked Respeecher to keep the name of that character a secret for now — and with so many franchise veterans returning for the series, there’s certainly no shortage of potential candidates.
Polygon spoke with Respeecher CEO Alex Serdiuk to better understand a process that to many fans no doubt borders on sacrilege: using technology to create entirely bespoke performances for one (or possibly even two) of the Star Wars saga’s most iconic characters. From the outset, Serdiuk emphasizes the human element behind the platform itself. “With our technology and our services, we can create a digital copy of a particular voice and enable another person to speak in this voice,” he explains. “And therefore we enable [studios] to scale voices, to age voices, and even resurrect voices for some projects.”
So, far from the mental image conjured up by terms like “artificial intelligence” and “voice cloning” — that of a sound engineer running lines of dialogue through a computer algorithm that then spits out audio files. Respeecher’s work on Star Wars is surprisingly performance driven. While Darth Vader himself may be more machine now than man, if the Ukrainian startup is supplying his voice (and remember, we said “if”) the essence of the character’s voice is still very much flesh and blood.
“There is no AI yet, and I don’t believe it would
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