James Earl Jones Retires as the Voice of Darth Vader; Here’s How They Will Replace Him

September 28, 2022 Victor Medina

James Earl Jones, the 91-year-old acting legend who has been the voice of Star Wars villain Darth Vader since the original 1977 film, is stepping away from the role. The voice of Vader will now be created using AI technology and previous recordings of his voice.

Word of Jones’ retirement came from Star Wars sound supervising editor Matthew Wood in an interview with Vanity Fair. “He had mentioned he was looking into winding down this particular character,” Wood said when Jones came to Lucasfilm to record a single line for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. As a result, Lucasfilm turned to the Respeecher technology to recreate the Vader voice.

Using previously-recorded lines Jones spoke as Vader, Respeecher created an AI-generated “clone” of the voice, which is then laid over new lines that are read by another actor to create all-new lines that sound eerily like James Earl Jones. In fact, Vader’s voice in the recent Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi was created using the technology, not using a new performance from Jones.

Jones has now reportedly signed over his permission to use recordings of his voice for any future use in upcoming Star Wars projects.

The Respeecher tech was also used to create Luke Skywalker’s voice for the character’s appearance in the series The Book of Boba Fett; Mark Hamill did not provide lines for the character.

“The way it works is that we get a bunch of initial takes,” Dmytro Bielievtsov, Respeecher’s chief technical officer, explained to The Guardian. “We convert them with different varieties of the models, and then the client takes a listen and sees if the performance is right. Maybe things need to be tweaked or adjusted, but then they pick the model that they liked the most, and we proceed from there.” He said Lucasfilm found out about their technology when someone mentioned it online, and approached them.

In this video by Respeecher, we see first-hand how the technology can change any voice. This better explains why the Vader in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series sounded closer to the Original Trilogy Vader, as opposed to the Rogue One Vader, which was voiced by James Earl Jones and reflected the changes in his older voice.