Édith Piaf Biopic Will Recreate Singer’s Voice with AI
Hollywood isn’t wasting any time putting artificial intelligence to use now that the actors’ strike is over. Warner Music Group (a division of Warner Bros. Discovery) is partnering with French singer Édith Piaf’s estate to produce a biopic about the musician titled Edith. The film will be a combination of animation and “archival footage, stage and TV performances, personal footage and TV interviews” to paint a picture of the singer’s life. But that’s not all: Edith will be “narrated by an AI-generated facsimile of Piaf’s voice.” A previous biopic of Pilaf’s life called La Vie en Rose was released in 2007 and earned Marion Cotillard a Best Actress Oscar for portraying Pilaf.
This is creepy. I know they’re working with Piaf’s estate, so they have their permission, but I don’t like the idea of replicating her voice like this without her consent. This woman has been dead for sixty years; she has no say in this. And there was already an Édith Piaf biopic that was well-received enough to win a couple of Oscars (back when that meant something). This feels like a testing ground for AI vocal recreations, and they’re using someone who was already the subject of a successful biopic so they can disappear this as best they can if it doesn’t work or pisses people off too much. It’s only going to get weirder from here, folks.
