Charlotte Foster
Art

New Netflix doco narrated by AI-generated Andy Warhol

A new documentary about artist Andy Warhol will resurrect the art world icon through artificial intelligence. 

Following a controversial trend amongst filmmakers, the artist will be heard reading through his diary entries and discussing his successful art career. 

The voice will not be that of the real artist, but rather created to mimic his voice through artificial intelligence technology. 

Warhol, who died in 1987, had an extensive impact on the art world with his famous pop art movement and his Campbell soup cans collections. 

Andrew Rossi, who created the upcoming The Andy Warhol Diaries series, undertook this unusual measure with the Andy Warhol Foundation to have their permission to create the series with his AI-generated voice, according to the recently released trailer. 

The series also portrays the AI-generated narration as something Warhol himself would’ve wanted.

In recent years, many filmmakers have relied on AI technology to recreate the voice of a deceased person for a biographical documentary. 

Last year, AI was used to recreate Anthony Bourdain’s voice for Roadrunner and to reconstruct footage of the Beatles producing their album Let It Be for the three-part series Get Back.

Though generally seen as technically impressive, this usage of AI has provoked debate about the ethics of utilising the technology to “resurrect” dead figures, and generated questions about the truth-telling quality commonly associated with documentary filmmaking.

You can check out the trailer for The Andy Warhol Diaries below.

Image credits: Getty Images

Tags:
art, Netflix, documentary, Andy Warhol, artificial intelligence