James Earl Jones won't voice Darth Vader anymore, but an A.I will do it for him

James Earl Jones, seen here in a 2016 file photo at the Tony Awards in New York, has signed over the rights to recreate his voice digitally for Darth Vader. – Photos: AP (left), Disney+ Hotstar (right)

For the past 45 years since Star Wars was released, the deep baritone voice of James Earl Jones has been synonymous with the menacing voice of Darth Vader, arguably one of the most iconic screen villain of all times. And though Jones was still credited for the villain's voice in the Disney+ Hotstar series Obi-Wan Kenobi, it seems that it wasn't really Jones himself who was speaking those lines.

In a recent article on Vanity Fair, it was revealed that the 91-year-old has in fact stepped back from actively voicing the role of Darth Vader, and given his consent for Lucasfilm to digitally recreate his voice for the character via archival recordings, with the help of a proprietary A.I. algorithm created by a Ukrainian start-up company called Respeecher.