Tech

Val Kilmer has been able to speak in Top Gun: Maverick thanks to artificial intelligence

Top Gun: Maverick It is being a success with both critics and the public. The first film, released in 1986, was at the time a good boost for the careers of Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, but in the sequel the leading role is taken entirely by the former, while the latter has a much smaller role.

One of the possible reasons why Val Kilmer has had a supporting role in Top Gun: Maverick is due to serious health problems that have dragged on for the past decade. The actor lost the ability to speak easily due to a tracheotomy he had in 2017 while being treated for throat cancer, so he has been using a typist ever since. Nevertheless, Val Kilmer is seen speaking seemingly smoothly in the original version of Top Gun: Maverick, how was that possible? That is the question we are going to answer in this post.

Val Kilmer has been able to speak in Top Gun: Maverick thanks Sonatic, a London-based artificial intelligence firm capable of creating voice models with actors playing lines from established scripts. The procedure consists of passing the recorded voices to its proprietary voice engine, Void Engine, which is dedicated to training the artificial intelligence model. The Voice Engine itself provides various manual and automated capabilities to verify the quality of the generated model.

In the case of Kilmer, the process has required some manual work because the material taken consisted of recordings of his own voice from when he was still able to speak normally. The company has had to work with a limited amount of material, which also had to be carefully cleaned to remove background noise without destroying the spoken content. The audio transcripts were then generated and the audio and text were paired in short snippets to create the model that was trained by the Voice Engine, but the resulting data was in quantitative terms about 10 times lower than normal in a project.

Due to the lack of data, the algorithms used in the Voice Engine were not able to offer the necessary results, so Sonatic decided research and implement new algorithms that would allow the production of higher quality options from the available material. In the end, they managed to generate 40 different voice models and selected the one that worked best in terms of quality and expressiveness. In addition, new algorithms created to recreate Val Kilmer’s voice have been introduced to the Voice Engine, thus allowing its use for future customers.

Val Kilmer has shown his gratitude to Sonatic through the following words: “I am grateful to the entire team at Sonantic, who masterfully restored my voice in a way I never imagined possible. As human beings, the ability to communicate is at the core of our existence and the effects of throat cancer have made it difficult for others to understand me. The opportunity to tell my story, in a voice that feels authentic and familiar, is an incredibly special gift.”.

Zeena Qureshi, CEO and co-founder of Sonantic, has commented on what happened “nine years helping children with autism learn how to use their voice as a better instrument for communication. The project with Val proved again how empowering it can be when people overcome challenges by speaking up.”.

They say out there that it was Val Kilmer himself who begged to participate in Top Gun: Maverick. Whether or not that statement is true, his inclusion would most likely not have been possible without the help of Sonatic, so the actor’s gratitude is as motivated as it is justified.

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